Stories
Slash Boxes
Comments

SoylentNews is people

WINVote Voting Machines Used in Virginia Elections are Shockingly Insecure

posted by martyb on Thursday April 16 2015, @04:22PM   Printer-friendly
from the Bzzzt!-Bzzzt! dept.

hash14 writes:

The Virginia election commission, which is responsible for certifying whether machines are fit to be used in elections, has decertified the Advanced Voting Solutions WINVote and for many very good reasons. Amongst the many security flaws in this product are:

  • Weak administrator passwords such as "admin" or "abcde"
  • Use of an embedded version of Windows XP which hasn't been updated since 2004
  • Use of WEP for Wifi encryption
  • An absence of any firewall

Worse still, this machine has been used in actual elections and its lack of any logging or record-keeping means that we'll never know if its weaknesses were used to manipulate the outcome of an election. As a proof of concept, security researchers successfully demonstrated accessing the machine and manipulating the recorded vote counts.

 
This discussion has been archived. No new comments can be posted.
WINVote Voting Machines Used in Virginia Elections are Shockingly Insecure | Log In/Create an Account | Top | 35 comments | Search Discussion
Display Options Threshold/Breakthrough Mark All as Read Mark All as Unread
The Fine Print: The following comments are owned by whoever posted them. We are not responsible for them in any way.

  • (Score: 4, Interesting) by SubiculumHammer on Thursday April 16 2015, @05:06PM

    by SubiculumHammer (5191) on Thursday April 16 2015, @05:06PM (#171649)

    Criminal.
    It is worth repeating.

    Starting Score:    1  point
    Moderation   +3  
       Insightful=1, Interesting=1, Informative=1, Total=3
    Extra 'Interesting' Modifier   0  
    Total Score:   4  

  • (Score: 5, Funny) by mhajicek on Thursday April 16 2015, @05:58PM

    by mhajicek (51) on Thursday April 16 2015, @05:58PM (#171676)

    But they're so much more convenient! It used to be that voting officials would have to physically swap out boxes of ballets and dispose of the originals.

    --
    The spacelike surfaces of time foliations can have a cusp at the surface of discontinuity. - P. Hajicek

    • (Score: 2) by captain normal on Thursday April 16 2015, @08:47PM

      by captain normal (2205) on Thursday April 16 2015, @08:47PM (#171726)

      Not to mention saving the the hassle of going into all those graveyards and copying down names to register.

      --
      Everyone is entitled to his own opinion, but not to his own facts"- --Daniel Patrick Moynihan--

      • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday April 17 2015, @12:34PM

        by Anonymous Coward on Friday April 17 2015, @12:34PM (#171989)

        So you advocate discrimination against the dead? :-)