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Another item from Def Con 26, which ended the other day, an 11-year-old was easily able to change tallies on real electronic voting equipment within minutes. These machines are designed not to leave any evidence when tampering happens so it was useful that there were many witnesses present for her demo.
Election hackers [sic] have spent years trying to bring attention to flaws in election equipment. But with the world finally watching at DEFCON, the world's largest hacker conference, they have a new struggle: pointing out flaws without causing the public to doubt that their vote will count.
This weekend saw the 26th annual DEFCON gathering. It was the second time the convention had featured a Voting Village, where organizers set up decommissioned election equipment and watch hackers [sic] find creative and alarming ways to break in. Last year, conference attendees found new vulnerabilities for all five voting machines and a single e-poll book of registered voters over the course of the weekend, catching the attention of both senators introducing legislation and the general public. This year's Voting Village was bigger in every way, with equipment ranging from voting machines to tabulators to smart card readers, all currently in use in the US.
In a room set aside for kid hackers [sic], an 11-year-old girl hacked a replica of the Florida secretary of state's website within 10 minutes — and changed the results.
Earlier on SN:
Georgia Defends Voting System Despite 243-Percent Turnout in One Precinct
South Carolina's 13k Electronic Voting Machines Vulnerable, Unreliable
Top Voting Machine Vendor Admits It Installed Remote-Access Software on Systems Sold to States
(Score: 1, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday August 14 2018, @05:39PM (2 children)
The way you will buy them is because the state, in cooperation with the feds, is going to offer a program of free money for your county elections board to buy these machines. No one is going to refuse free money.
I heard on NPR today about how voting machine X "hasn't received updates since 2009". The mechanical machines my county replaced were from the 1960s and were kept until 2010. And some piece of shit electronic solution has planned obsolescence in 5 years.
(Score: 5, Informative) by DeathMonkey on Tuesday August 14 2018, @06:19PM (1 child)
The way you will buy them is because the state, in cooperation with the feds, is going to offer a program of free money for your county elections board to buy these machines. No one is going to refuse free money.
Democrats wanted to give them money to buy machines with paper trails. Republicans, of course, rejected it. [cnet.com]
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday August 14 2018, @06:24PM
No driver's license, birth certificate, or other proof of citizenship? No vote.