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Related: Editorials & Other Articles, Issue Forums, Alliance Forums, Region ForumsIf this isn't alarming, I don't know what is: How to Hack an Election in 7 Minutes
This is a very long, detailed piece with a lot of tech talk.
When Princeton professor Andrew Appel decided to hack into a voting machine, he didnt try to mimic the Russian attackers who hacked into the Democratic National Committee's database last month. He didnt write malicious code, or linger near a polling place where the machines can go unguarded for days.
Instead, he bought one online.
With a few cursory clicks of a mouse, Appel parted with $82 and became the owner of an ungainly metallic giant called the Sequoia AVC Advantage, one of the oldest and vulnerable, electronic voting machines in the United States (among other places its deployed in Louisiana, New Jersey, Virginia and Pennsylvania). No sooner did a team of bewildered deliverymen roll the 250-pound device into a conference room near Appels cramped, third-floor office than the professor set to work. He summoned a graduate student named Alex Halderman, who could pick the machines lock in seven seconds. Clutching a screwdriver, he deftly wedged out the four ROM chipsthey werent soldered into the circuit board, as sense might dictatemaking it simple to replace them with one of his own: A version of modified firmware that could throw off the machines results, subtly altering the tally of votes, never to betray a hint to the voter. The attack was concluded in minutes. To mark the achievement, his student snapped a photo of Appeloblong features, messy black locks and a salt-and-pepper beardgrinning for the camera, fists still on the circuit board, as if to look directly into the eyes of the American taxpayer: Dont look at meyoure the one who paid for this thing.
Appels mischief might be called an occupational asset: He is part of a diligent corps of so-called cyber-academicsprofessors who have spent the past decade serving their country by relentlessly hacking it. Electronic voting machinesparticularly a design called Direct Recording Electronic, or DREstook off in 2002, in the wake of Bush v. Gore. For the ensuing 15 years, Appel and his colleagues have deployed every manner of stunt to convince the public that the system is pervasively unsecure and vulnerable.
Read more: http://www.politico.com/magazine/story/2016/08/2016-elections-russia-hack-how-to-hack-an-election-in-seven-minutes-214144#ixzz4GTrrmQ74
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proverbialwisdom
(4,959 posts)Google rush holt e-voting.
Igel
(35,317 posts)Or do you think that citizen pollworkers are too inept to check the security seals before voting starts and to sign off on them being in place at the conclusion of voting?
We also have to assume that a lot of people will have access to the modified ROMs necessary, or expertise required for picking the locks. Could you get a replacement ROM for this machine and write the revised firmware on it? (Or is there some nice commercial or non-profit place that'll do this for you?)
Every place I've been a pollworker we had a three-way check. The official register, the voting machines, and an informal register. We stressed out if we were off by one or two between the official and informal registers, and probably would have hidden inside the machine if any of the yes/no or R/D/L/... races or issues had a total higher than the official record.
Yeah, lots of things are possible. In the right circumstances. And this is one of the "older and most vulnerable" machines.
Even in the states these old machines are deployed in, they likely deployed in certain precincts.
Some of this plays word games. It's possible for all the air molecules in my kitchen to sudden congregate in the upper NW corner. It's highly, highly improbable. But for a certain non-trivial number of people, the word "possible" quickly and easily goes from "it can happen" to "it happens."
randome
(34,845 posts)[hr][font color="blue"][center]Treat your body like a machine. Your mind like a castle.[/center][/font][hr]
LiberalFighter
(50,940 posts)Try rigging it in all of the needed voting locations necessary to change the outcome. There are too many locations that would need to be rigged. And each location do not have the same elections being conducted. The firmware would have to be different for each level even within a state because each county don't use the same machines.
cali
(114,904 posts)Dark n Stormy Knight
(9,760 posts)Especially considering that most of the programs, firmware, etc. are proprietary, and therefore secret to anyone but whomever the company chooses to make them available.
LakeArenal
(28,819 posts)Not only do I know someone who could do it, he says it's easy.. But Wisconsin has dealt with rigged machines for years. I think the machines come in that way and poll workers have nothing to do with it. There have been many reports of machines flipping votes. It's hard to prove their rigged when the folks who investigate rigging are the ones doing the rigging.
Stevepol
(4,234 posts)We can build them that way at the factory. My buddies and I are all far right Christians and cheating is OK if it stops abortions and the Satanic Democrats from getting elected. By having the hackable stuff built in, all we have to do is insert a memory card or any suitable card for like 5 seconds to switch to the hackable firmware and by using a code, switch to whatever level of "tilt" we want. Ain't it sweet?
Of course, we'd never really do this because if we got caught doing it, we'd get this awful slap on the wrists and this terrible diatribe like "Never never do that again. Plus it's illegal to cheat so actually we'd never never do that anyway because we are ultra moral and ethical.
So anyway forget anything I just said. Make it like I never said it.
George II
(67,782 posts)...here in CT, we get handed an 8-1/2 x 11 card with the candidates and/or questions on it. We go to a small desk with shields around it to mark the card. Then we take the card (they give you a folder to put it in if you're suspicious that someone is looking at it) to one of two machines and feed it into the machine. There's a poll worker at each to make sure the card doesn't jam or power goes off.
There is absolutely no way that someone can do anything with the machine without people seeing that person doing it.
csziggy
(34,136 posts)The Hursti Hack, shown in the movie Hacking Democracy: "However, during the Dec. 13 2005 testing, Hursti successfully altered the votes on the memory card. His memory card manipulations falsified both the voting machine results tapes and the GEMS central tabulator report." https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hursti_Hack#Hursti_Memory_Card_Hacks
(Yes, I know that Bev Harris and Black Box Voting have very negative reputations here, the set of demonstrations documented by them with Harri Hursti and with Hugh Thompson got a lot of publicity even if they had no lasting effect that resulted in improving security.)
While this does require that the machines be accessed at some point prior to the beginning of the election, it is possible. If election personnel do not have perfect security, elections can easily be rigged.
George II
(67,782 posts)Arazi
(6,829 posts)I'll give this a kick and rec because I know its damn important
woodsprite
(11,915 posts)Trump promised to pay them some of his 'billions'.
forest444
(5,902 posts)The specialists who've shown how easy it is to hack these things - even with your cell phone - have, as you might expect, been harassed by the courts and attacked by the pro-Macri press.
http://www.democraticunderground.com/10026942187
SheriffBob
(552 posts)instead of making voter suppression id laws?
Because those kind of laws wold affect white elitists, imho.
Stevepol
(4,234 posts)The average "red tilt" in the country is 3%. THE AVERAGE. In KS it's 7% and where the machines are entrenched along with the Repubs it's also closer to 5-7% than 3%.
Check out CODE RED by Jonathan Simon. He's also the head honcho at ELECTION DEFENSE ALLIANCE. Check out the web site:
http://electiondefensealliance.org/
If Trump wins and there's a good chance he will, it will be LARGELY because of the voting machines, just as it was when Kerry lost in 2004.
SheriffBob
(552 posts)about criminal voter fraud people.
alain2112
(25 posts)More precisely, election fraud does happen - and it's investigated and prosecuted and the perps go to prison - but for every genuine case of fraud there are more than six thousand reported cases of alien abduction (UFOs and anal probings and mutilated cattle and such).
The only thing this kind of story does, and I mean the only thing, is to feed the overheated imaginations of the CT crackpots. You know, those misguided simpletons who believe Brad Friedman is a legitimate journalist.
Which is not to say that we should be cavalier about election security. Our physical and organizational infrastructure must be secure, and it must be seen as secure - which is why we have lots of people working on the issue.
The last thing we need is roving gangs of pretend experts spreading malicious nonsense. They aim to spread hysteria and over reaction, which in itself undercuts election security and pointlessly erodes faith in our national institutions.
The final, fundamental point here is that the Left has to stop coming up with lame excuses to brush away all of our defeats. Hillary dis not steal from Bernie! Until we stand and face our weaknesses, we will never learn the lessons of our failures so we will continue to lose and lose and lose.
SheriffBob
(552 posts)milestogo
(16,829 posts)than there is regarding voting machines. Democracy does not safeguard itself from people who want to hijack it.
Hannahcares
(118 posts)Dear DU,
Been working on voting machine security (DREs as well as Optical Scanners for 10 years) so many elections with results that defied pre-election polling as well as exit polls. (Think Brownback in Kansas as recent example)
Ed Felton and his students at Princeton have done outstanding ( and sobering) research on this vital topic. Please read it and pass it on to your colleagues and friends) these are not tin hat conspiracy theories. Without serious fixes and careful scrutiny, we could see electoral disasters at the local, state and national level. Thanks for listening! Peace, Hannah
cali
(114,904 posts)lpbk2713
(42,757 posts)Rest assured there are more effective ways of getting preferred results on a larger scale.
Warren DeMontague
(80,708 posts)eliminates all the problems with people having to get off work to wait in 8 hour lines, etc.
Jeffersons Ghost
(15,235 posts)What will happen afterward?
SheriffBob
(552 posts)nt
no_hypocrisy
(46,116 posts)This topic has been discussed, analyzed, and re-discussed, re-analyzed.
What are we going to do about this?
a snickers bar and keep researching.
stay tuned to DU.