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posted by chromas on Thursday November 15 2018, @12:00PM   Printer-friendly
from the ¯\_(ツ)_/¯ dept.

I Bought Used Voting Machines on eBay for $100 Apiece. What I Found Was Alarming

In 2016, I bought two voting machines online for less than $100 apiece. I didn't even have to search the dark web. I found them on eBay.

Surely, I thought, these machines would have strict guidelines for lifecycle control like other sensitive equipment, like medical devices. I was wrong. I was able to purchase a pair of direct-recording electronic voting machines and have them delivered to my home in just a few days. I did this again just a few months ago. Alarmingly, they are still available to buy online.

If getting voting machines delivered to my door was shockingly easy, getting inside them proved to be simpler still. The tamper-proof screws didn't work, all the computing equipment was still intact, and the hard drives had not been wiped. The information I found on the drives, including candidates, precincts, and the number of votes cast on the machine, were not encrypted. Worse, the "Property Of" government labels were still attached, meaning someone had sold government property filled with voter information and location data online, at a low cost, with no consequences. It would be the equivalent of buying a surplus police car with the logos still on it.

[...] I reverse-engineered the machines to understand how they could be manipulated. After removing the internal hard drive, I was able to access the file structure and operating system. Since the machines were not wiped after they were used in the 2012 presidential election, I got a great deal of insight into how the machines store the votes that were cast on them. Within hours, I was able to change the candidates' names to be that of anyone I wanted. When the machine printed out the official record for the votes that were cast, it showed that the candidate's name I invented had received the most votes on that particular machine.

This year, I bought two more machines to see if security had improved. To my dismay, I discovered that the newer model machines—those that were used in the 2016 election—are running Windows CE and have USB ports, along with other components, that make them even easier to exploit than the older ones. Our voting machines, billed as "next generation," and still in use today, are worse than they were before—dispersed, disorganized, and susceptible to manipulation.


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  • (Score: 2, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday November 15 2018, @07:11PM (1 child)

    by Anonymous Coward on Thursday November 15 2018, @07:11PM (#762300)

    Pre-electoral / campaign silence laws are ancient and were introduced for a reason. The pro/con are mostly about limiting the power of the media and the money the controls it in manipulating public opinion on emotional grounds using smear tactics when the opposition can't react in time with facts.

    That being said, it doesn't matter in the US since Americans vote on tribal identity rather than between opinions and disregard news as fake unless it supports their opinions already.

    Also there's no monopoly on corruption...

    That's a huge mistake. It takes coordinated effort and money to pull off a grand elections hack. By accepting the existence of hack-able voting machines you're hurting the ability of small parties from competing against big parties. It's the same reason you need regulations to keep the market free. Without it someone will just cartel and gobble up everyone else until a monopoly is formed.
    Besides, don't forget the nature of the American elections is one of private corporations and individuals buying (and typically hedging) their candidates into office. Introducing another money-based "game mechanics" into the elections would further deteriorate things.

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  • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday November 15 2018, @08:09PM

    by Anonymous Coward on Thursday November 15 2018, @08:09PM (#762326)

    Ah yes, the voice of reason shouting into a tornado of stupid. I do hope some of your points sink in.