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Security Firm Shows How To Hack a US Voting Machine (bleepingcomputer.com)

An anonymous reader writes: "Three days before the US Presidential Election takes place, California-based security firm Cylance showed the world how easy it is to hack one of the many [electronic] voting machine models that will be deployed at voting stations across the US on Election Day." Bleeping Computer reports that "The machine that Cylance researchers chose for their test was the Sequoia AVC Edge Mk1, one of the most popular models... The technique researchers created modifies the Public Counter, but also the Protective Counter, which is a backup mechanism that acts as a redundant verification system to ensure the first vote results are valid." Physical access is needed to hack the machine, but the hack takes a short time to perform.
FBI Director James Comey said in September that America's voting machines would be hard to compromise because they're not connect to the internet, but these researchers simply used a PCMCIA card to reflash the machine's firmware. Comey also made the reassuring point that it's hard to "hack into" America's voting system because "it's so clunky and dispersed. It's Mary and Fred putting a machine under the basketball hoop at the gym."

3 of 209 comments (clear)

  1. Paper... by JasterBobaMereel · · Score: 5, Insightful

    The paper and pencil voting system with manual counting is even more unhackable, and easily verifiable whilst still being anonymous and immune to vote selling ad coercion ...and is used all over the world with no real issues ....

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    Puteulanus fenestra mortis
  2. Coins for Hillary by Geoffrey.landis · · Score: 5, Informative

    This woman won 6 of 6 coin tosses to beat Bernie in Iowa.

    That is incorrect information that was pushed by the media in initial frenzy of reporting, but completely debunked. Here's the Iowa Register story, which I would the most accurate source for information in Iowa: http://www.desmoinesregister.c...

    According to the Register, the report of Hillary winning six coin flips came from social media. Of the seven coin flips to break ties that were actually officially reported through the voting app, Sanders won six, and Clinton one. http://www.cnn.com/2016/02/02/...

    Here's a more interesting question: since Clinton did not in fact win a majority of coin tosses, what are the statistical chances that coin flips that happened to get reported in on social media would suggest that she did?

    Another link: http://www.theatlantic.com/pol...

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    http://www.geoffreylandis.com
  3. Secret ballot is important by Geoffrey.landis · · Score: 5, Insightful

    An abusive spouse is just one of thousands of scenarios of voting coercion.

    The U.S. adopted secret ballots for a reason: to make it harder to implement vote buying and coercion. Maybe you're thinking that in modern times when everybody is trustworthy and nobody had bad motives, we don't need this safeguard.
    But nevertheless, there is a reason for the secret ballot, and we shouldn't undermine it.

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    http://www.geoffreylandis.com