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Hackers Break Into Voting Machines Within 2 Hours at Defcon (cbsnews.com)

Posted by msmash on from the of-course-they-did dept.

Hackers from around the world had the rare opportunity to crack election-style voting machines this weekend in Las Vegas -- and they didn't disappoint. From a report: After nearly an hour and a half, Carsten Schurmann, an associate professor with IT-University of Copenhagen, successfully cracked into a voting machine at Las Vegas' Defcon convention on Friday night, CNET reports. Schurmann penetrated Advanced Voting Solutions' 2000 WinVote machine through its Wi-Fi system. Using a Windows XP exploit from 2003, he was able to remotely access the machine, CNET reports. Voting technology was thrust into the political spotlight when election systems in several states were targeted by Russian cyber attacks. The convention purchased more than 30 voting machines for the event, although, organizers didn't specify how many models those units represented.

8 of 37 comments (clear)

  1. So what? by Train0987 · · Score: 2

    This is why voting machines on not connected to the internet.

    1. Re:So what? by Train0987 · · Score: 3, Informative

      I just realized these machines were known as exploitable and decertified years ago. Nice clickbait though.

    2. Re:So what? by TheDarkener · · Score: 2

      Are you trolling?

      --
      It is pitch black. You are likely to be eaten by a grue.
  2. Last Year's News by kampf · · Score: 2

    This news is one year old.

    DEF CON 26, the 2018 show, starts on the 9th of August this year...and will have a Voting Machine Village again.

    1. Re:Last Year's News by Train0987 · · Score: 2

      Gotta keep "The Russians Hacked the Election!" myth alive at all costs. Even if it means publicizing the exploit a known vulnerable 15 year-old machine that's not in use anywhere.

  3. Brave new world by TheDarkener · · Score: 2

    I think all OG Slashdotters here realize that current voting machines deployed here in the U.S. are all shit, hackable, it's been like this for many elections. There's proof online. But will anything ever be done about it? The people that make the big decisions at the state/federal level have always been reluctant to take security seriously enough to do anything about it - after all, it's all about the Benjamins.

    So what next? Are we just going to keep holding elections that nobody really believes in, on outdated, vulnerable piece of shit voting machines? How will the people who actually understand the internals of machines like this convince the people who purchase and deploy them that they can't keep doing it this way?

    --
    It is pitch black. You are likely to be eaten by a grue.
    1. Re:Brave new world by Train0987 · · Score: 2

      You are absolutely correct. Voting machines should never be computerized or networked. The old mechanical lever-style machines with manual counts work just fine and are as secure as you can get.

      What most people don't realize is that voting equipment is a very expensive burden for the local governments that are responsible for buying them. They get used one day every 2 years, maybe 4. That's why most eqpt is 50 years old and computerizing them is a bad idea (they won't be updated or replaced for decades, usually by elderly volunteers). There simply isn't a budget for these things.

      The biggest push for these things is the demand by the media for immediate results. And of course the blaming of hackers by whoever loses whatever election they felt they were owed.

    2. Re:Brave new world by Train0987 · · Score: 2

      It wasn't a problem at all. Neither was the butterfly ballot debacle. That was all about the Gore team calling a bunch of elderly Jewish Democrats in West Palm Beach and convincing them that they had voted for Pat Buchanan by mistake. It was a delay tactic by the Gore team to hold up Florida from certifying their election results until they could come up with a better strategy to contest the entire 2000 election.

      I was there, deeply involved in that mess.