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posted by Fnord666 on Monday September 23 2019, @04:05AM   Printer-friendly
from the actual-theft dept.

Submitted via IRC for Bytram

Georgia's entire voter file potentially compromised after machine thefts

Police said thieves stole two express poll machines, set up for a special school board election.

[...] Sometime overnight, police said a burglar stole two machines used to check in voters. These are not the machines people voted on, but are used to check in voters. 

The Fulton County Elections Director said they were locked up in a suitcase like this one inside the center. Poll workers noticed the case was gone this morning when they got in to open the polls.

“It’s a statewide voter file that’s on there. It has name, address, and date of birth of all the voters in the state of Georgia,” Barron said. 

While Barron told Channel 2 Action News the data is password protected, for Georgia State University cybersecurity researcher Don Hunt, it’s not 100 percent secure. 

“Depending on the type of shell that they use and the type of software they’re using, that’s typically not that hard to break for someone who really knows what they’re doing,” Hunt said.

[...] And while Atlanta police works to identify the burglars and track down the missing machines,​​​Raffensperger has a message to all local elections leaders.

“You need to do whatever you can do to secure your equipment,” Raffensperger said. 

The state will soon roll out a new, $100 million voting system which Raffensperger said will have a new iPad-based check-in system, which they can track and delete data remotely if they get stolen.


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  • (Score: 1, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Monday September 23 2019, @04:55AM (2 children)

    by Anonymous Coward on Monday September 23 2019, @04:55AM (#897419)

    The data is public anyway. Seriously. Every political operative and private detective has a copy of it already.

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  • (Score: 2) by stretch611 on Monday September 23 2019, @12:41PM (1 child)

    by stretch611 (6199) on Monday September 23 2019, @12:41PM (#897527)

    Sad, but true...
    This article is from 2017.... https://phys.org/news/2017-06-georgia-voter-exposed-internet.html [phys.org]
    I'm not sure if it is from a reported breach of voter records in a test at Kenessaw State University in 2016 or a different breach.
    There are also plenty of stories in the 2018 time frame.
    https://www.walb.com/story/38886343/6-million-georgia-voters-records-exposed-could-have-easily-been-compromised/ [walb.com]
    https://www.cnn.com/2018/08/14/politics/georgia-brian-kemp-voter-data/index.html [cnn.com]

    All the data is hacked already...

    (and the secretary of state who was in charge of election security at the time was elected governor in 2018.)

    --
    Now with 5 covid vaccine shots/boosters altering my DNA :P
    • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday September 23 2019, @02:12PM

      by Anonymous Coward on Monday September 23 2019, @02:12PM (#897552)

      You're not grokking that the data is public, ie the government has to release a copy to anyone who claims a desire to access individual voters for political purposes.