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posted by Fnord666 on Sunday March 29 2020, @04:10AM   Printer-friendly
from the do-the-candidates-count? dept.

HBO's 'Kill Chain' doc highlights the flaws in US election machines:

While COVID-19 might be putting just about everything else on hold, we're still marching towards a presidential election later this year. After the high-profile interference of 2016, election security and foreign meddling are still critical issues, but many states still aren't doing enough to ensure the integrity of the process. A documentary premiering tonight on HBO proves a sobering reminder of the fragility of America's voting infrastructure.

While the matter is of grave concern across the country, Kill Chain: The Cyber War on America's Elections delves into problems with some specific machines and issues in certain states. For instance, back in 2005, security researcher Harri Hursti (a key figure in the film) demonstrated a memory card exploit that could alter votes on an optical scan voting machine. Those Diebold machines are still in operation in 20 states and are slated for use in November, the filmmakers note.

Elsewhere, a judge banned Georgia from continuing to use the vulnerable systems it had in place for well over a decade. In the wake of the contentious 2018 gubernatorial election, officials had new machines in place for this month's presidential primary. While the replacements can print paper ballots, which are important for proper vote auditing, they're still very much vulnerable as they run on Windows 7 -- for which Microsoft recently ended support.

We also hear from an Indian hacker who says he was able to gain full access to Alaska's system, including live voting data, during the 2016 presidential election. He claims he'd have been able to remove a candidate from the ballot or change any vote, but decided not to for fear of triggering some kind of alarm.


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  • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday March 29 2020, @07:46PM (2 children)

    by Anonymous Coward on Sunday March 29 2020, @07:46PM (#977007)

    I doubt it simply because of how much political capital the DNC spent on Biden. Pretty much every candidate that dropped out has endorsed Biden, undoubtedly with promises of support for the political career. The DNC is still pretending that money, manipulation, and "legal" cheating via the DNC's weird rules make them superior to the GOP.

    It is slightly better, but that is what leads us to the choice between a turd and a lump of shit.

  • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday March 29 2020, @08:07PM (1 child)

    by Anonymous Coward on Sunday March 29 2020, @08:07PM (#977014)

    Trump is not the candidate the RNC wanted.

    • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday March 30 2020, @01:35AM

      by Anonymous Coward on Monday March 30 2020, @01:35AM (#977081)

      The funny part is you're bringing that up for literally no reason. Re-read the post and then try and figure out how you're comment comes in.