If you're American, it's nearly time to do your civic duty and pick the lesser of two evils for the greater good... and then to wonder if that vote actually got counted. With Diebold admitting its own machines are
utterly insecure, competitor Sequoia is now under the microscope and, after a little
quality time with the company's machines, Princeton researchers have filed a 158 page report on the ease of replacing their ROMs and winning yourself an election. Okay, we know what you're thinking: "Hacking hardware isn't exactly easy when the computer is in a locked box." Amazingly, it is. A researcher was able to bypass the physical security mechanisms in 13 seconds, despite never having picked a lock before. Now you're thinking: "But you'd need to do that on hundreds of them!" Not so; once infected that malicious code can spread itself to others, and, with no paper trail and an easily bypassed internal audit system, you're well on your way to whatever dark corner of Washington, D.C. you care to occupy!
[Via
Ars Technica]
posted Oct 24th 2008 10:19AM
So Mickey Mouse has an even better chance of winning this year?
Not if Frank Zappa has anything to say about it!
@thedesolate1
Fitting name. Your posts always stink of bitterness.
Heres a little song i wrote.
I hope you take it note-for-note.
Don't worry, be happy now! OOOOOO oo oo oo oooOOooooooo.
Not quite.... sometimes I'm being serious. Most of the time sarcastic. Its just that i need to optimize my work and in other cases others sarcasm meters need to be augmented. I see everything for what it is though that is for sure. So yes the machines are being fucked with and their are real things on the line that matter to you and I but No I don't think Mickey Mouse will lose this election. We have net neutrality friendly hackers right on it!
Now sing along with me:
"Why must the children play in the street?
Broken hearts, faded the dreams
Peace on earth to everyone that you meet
Don't you worry, It could be so sweet"
I've never posted anything serious b4. And here goes my first serious post.
In my humble opinion, the US will be in an economic and financial disaster if McCain were to run the country.
Heck, I am not even American and not care so much who will win (although I did stayed for a few years in the states during College).
When you see empty trucks driving around Iraq just so that it could be tracked by GPS so the contracting company can bill the goverment to pay them ridiculous prices for nothing, then you know something is wrong.
If you quite follow the financial bailout plan, you would be shocked about how the Bush administration (via Paulson) originally wanted to give premium money for something that people would call toxic and worthless in exchange for nothing. The gov should have asked for equity stakes from the companies in exchange of buying all that worthless assests that are going to be foreclosed anyways. Only after bewilderment and ridicule from EU states did the original bailous plan was scrapped. Now Paulson is in a state of panic because the gov should at least be seen to be doing something (regardless of its effectiveness).
Throwing money at hedgefunds and investment banks is not solving the root cause. The root cause is the american people are suffering. The American people cannot pay their mortgage. It's that simple. The gov should look into that and not look at the well being of those hedgefunds' and investment banks' owners.
America is a great country with wonderful friendly people. I hope one hideous evil will not be preceeded by another evil.
for those actually willing to sit through the video, everything before 43 minutes is just about how the process is supposed to work. He doesn't get around to the cracking until 46 minutes in.
Helloooo President McCain!
what happened to the liberals bitching that McCain wasnt computer savvy.
You typically don't have to be liberal to make fun of someone's computer skills. You just have to be a bit geeky... like us technology blog dwellers.
of course mccain would have to have someone hack it for him... he wouldn't be able to do much damage on his own... unless you can hack it with a blackberry. He did invent them afterall...
It would explain why the Republican party never seems to worry about winning (have you actually watched a debate? At best McCain ties Obama). I mean, for Christ's sake, Palin would be one [missed] heartbeat away from the presidency!
Most of my family (about 20 people) have all pledged to move to Canada if that happens. God save us all.
@Daren :Nobody is saying that Mccain is a hacker, cracker or Neo in disguise, the "McCain's team" is able to do it or to contract some else (CIA) to do the dirt job.
Those are the machines we use in New Orleans.
I've been voting absentee since these cheatomatics arrived in my town. And I will do so until we go back to paper and pencil.
And no, you can't fix it with open source geekware. You don't know what is currently running on any PC, and you never will. Nor on the aggregator PC. And the cards. And who's accessing the databases online. There is no fix for this. You can design around stupidity, but never around malicious intent. Esp. when the fixers may actually work in the company that makes and services the damned machines.
Lesser of two evils? Hmm...this is hard. Should I vote for:
Cthulhu or Stephen Colbert?
That is just wonderful. American ingenuity.
At least these have multi-touch.
So you can casually flick through the candidates' holiday snaps before finalising your vote?
...In the future, all of your mindless partisan voting will be done on a big ass table.
Which is all slanty and shit.
I can make a big astable.
Just give me a giant 555 timer and a few mammoth capacitors.
...so you can vote both candidates at once if you time your click right.
can i have a side of extra big ass fries?
Not to get all tin-foil-hat-like but wouldn't Obama be in a better postition to, you know, yank the election, seeing how he the the techno-champion? Is backed by Google? Is going to create a "Technology Czar" cabinet position? Knows how to use a computer? etc.
The likely answer is no. The people that own these voting machines tend to be a conservative bunch... like how Diebold guaranteed Ohio for Bush well before the election took place.
Do I believe fraud took place? Hard to say, but I fall on the side of "probably not." Though it is doable, any irregularities for a THIRD cycle in a row would be the start of a whole new type of "change."
You don't need to be computer-savvy to hack a computer.
You are all probabley right. Anyway, it is still easier to steal an election by having people vote more than once. Or by having the dead vote.
Cue Sean Conery: "That's the Chicago way!"
He might be if he actually needed to yank the election.
Ron Paul can still win!
Vote Bob Barr, man. thats my plan.
"Ooooh, its one of those electronic voting dealies"!
ohhh they have the internet on voting machines now!
I am sure the desperate Republican Party is all over this.
Because when the Dems lose, it's because of voter fraud, but when they win it's because that the people voted fairly? You can't have it both ways.
Sure you can. Because a majority of the electorate *hopefully* can't be stupid enough to vote republican again after having the worst president we've ever had.
idiot
@kempcross
Wow. You know idiots are on both sides of the tape... Just because one slipped through is no reason to punish the party. Truth be told after everything that has happened, i STILL think we are better off than we would be with Kerry.
For the record, i'm not voting for either of those tools on Nov 4th.
You know why George Bush was (dare I say the most) hated as a president? Because more American citizens voted for Al Gore (A Nobel Peace Prize winner) than George Bush (The Man Who Started a War).
These are all facts, it's up to you to formulate your own opinion on the matter, then answer these questions:
Who did the American people really pick? Who would have been better for the country?
Well, we've now given even the stupidest of them a manual on how to do it.
Worst President? You are clearly not old enough to remember Jimmy Carter!
Worst President? You are clearly not old enough to remember Herbert Hoover!
Well Shrub does now have the lowest approval rating in history -- lower than Nixon when impeached
I do believe he was the worst president, but what I said was that he was the most hated, which (as phanbouy pointed out) is true.
Its not nearly as bad as the actual issues occurring during early voting, elsewhere in the country.
"voters... complained that when they tried to cast a vote for Democratic presidential candidate Barack Obama, the machine recorded a check in the box for Republican presidential candidate John McCain."
http://blog.wired.com/27bstroke6/2008/10/voting-machine.html
Dan Rather did a great expose last year on how horrible the ES&S voting machines that were used in this county are. Apparently the issues brought up haven't been fixed yet, with low-cost shoddy touchscreens. http://www.hd.net/drr227.html
The machines aren't any more secure, either. Lots of people have access to the buildings that most machines are kept.
they should have a code assigned to each voter and post the results online so that you can verify that your vote was registered the way you actually voted
That would jeopardise the anonymity of voting tremendously though.
That's why he said a voter code. If you could just look up THX 1138 to make sure that your vote was counted, I'd be all over it.
You're doing it wrong!
How about a show of hands? :P
What about handicapped people? Not everyone can afford this stuff http://www.engadget.com/2005/02/18/the-thought-controlled-robotic-arm/ !!!
Sweet!
Do you think we can use this to run Quake on the voting machines?
Nov 4: election day or nationwide lan party? You decide.
haha that would be the tits! I can just see it now, some guy spending 45min to cast his vote...
Massive LAN party. UT3 DM: first to 15. Winner gets to choose the next president.
"Please shoot the candidate you wish to vote for."
@jorvay
You already know what will happen in Florida... "Ohhhh, I thought I was supposed to shoot the one I DIDN'T want to win..."
Here in Canada, we still cast our votes with a pen and a piece of paper. I wouldn't have it any other way.
That's cuz there are only 12 of you in the whole country. lol.
Yes, but we have voters too dumb to punch holes in paper, so what are you gonna do?
It's cheap, it works, and if it wasn't for the fuck up in Florida in 2000, we would still be using paper ballots. Thanks Al Gore! For nothing.
in soviet russia voter punch you
You don't need to be computer-savvy to hack a computer.
You just need to have enough money to hire someone who is.
Of course you're forgetting the guards and voting officials that will be standing around while you try to pry open the case to insert this malicious code.
Guards and Voting Officials? The only staff present at most polling locations could be mistaken for John McCain's grandparents. Provide them with a piece of hard candy, and you've bought yourself 15 minutes to hack the machine.
Might I suggest a Werther's Original.
@mier: Who said it's going to be the voters who manipulate the machines? It could very well be the staff who inserts the appropriate voting program right before the elections start.
The Sequoia machine I voted on had a paper trail though it was internal to the machine.
There's a big difference between having someone put a stop to a recount where it was known that confirmed registered voters that voted might not be getting their ballots counted and something like Acorn where technically there hasn't even been voter fraud because all the people who were falsely registered would have to show up to try and vote to actually break the law.
ever heard of an absentee ballot there pal?
Son of a b*itch! That was to RocketBoy. GD Engadget comment system.
. . . I'm thinking user error . . .
I never would have thought this was gonna turn into a political discussion.
It's pretty simple: voting machines that have no real security == FAIL
wait.. didnt that happen in Heroes..
LOL, that's a great idea actually... it would bring out more voters from the south and midwest. Just tell them it's shooting practice.
As a system developer I watch in horror everytime the issue of electronic voting comes up.
Software has bugs. Software crash. That's just how it is. Therefore such an important issue as an election should never be allowed to be handled by computers.
Software gets tested. Software gets its bugs fixed.
Don't kill trees just because you've never used a decent software stack.
You'll note I made an assumption based on what I perceived as cynicism on your part towards software in general.
Let me know if that assumption was false.
Uh, the spaceshuttle's system runs OK. Why? Because they have a real team of developers (not copy and paste hackers) writing code and an equally capable team of testers trying to break the code until they have solid code. It's not hard, just tedious and requires hiring developers with a passion for robust code.
Except the space shuttle computers are deliberately simply, come in threes to check eachother, and still fail often.
Just like what Micah did in Heroes to get Nathan to win election, nice...
What did the guy take a fire extinguisher to the lock, cause I'm pretty sure the polling staff will notice that.
For the fool who thought there was any human security, most of the time you go into a little cubicle, and since this will be after halloween, just give the old fart volunteers running the place a piece or two of the old person crap candies the senile lady next door game you. Also, getting into one of these things is easier than screwing my schools computer crap in fourth grade. Sadly, once your in you cant quite get the nesesary prossesing power to run UT3, (nowhere near supcom he he) but if you bothered to you could probably play one of the flash shooters off miniclip. (they actually have a 'canidate fite' game and a game where you are the canidate fighting off terrorists.)
These things look like the upgrade stations in Dead Space
The greater good...
It would be nice if this time instead of hacking the machines to help the Bush clown, they were hacke to help Kinko the clown become the president. That would be a hack that would make me laugh. Watch:
http://current.com/items/89404694_kinko_for_president
If McCain wins its because the evil republicans owners of mercenary companies don't want to be held accountable. Palin would become vicepresident then president so Cheney can continue running the country at his pleasure.
There were reported issues with polling places back in March. Now this is even more of a threat to our Democracy.
Hey! Now I actually have a chance of winning!
If only my name was on the ballot...
You're all a bunch of idiots. We've had electronic voting in Belgium for over 15 years. Sure, you could probably get to a few computers and have override whatever the user's doing, but you can't hack 'm all. So there's no value in it.
Everyone gets a plastic card, just like you used to get a piece of paper, and the computer is totally unconnected and uses the simplest piece of software running on good ol' DOS and its only job is to mark your vote on the magnetic stripe. Then, you push your fresh vote in a box which has a card reader on top and that counts the vote as you put it in the box. There's a card for everyone, and only one card for each vote. All the cards are counted and all the boxes are sealed so if there's anyone tampering with the counts they can still open the box again and do a recount.
But of course, this is all because we invented electronic voting long before everyone had the Internet and every gizmo needed to be connected to that.
That's a bit dumb though, because punching a hole is the exact same thing as what you describe, it also enables a computer to read the vote and leaves a copy, that's not computerised voting at all and them getting tons and tons of magnetic cards is just a more expensive way of doing it, plus a magnetic vote can easily be overwritten on the card too, or you can rig the verification machine. Whereas refilling a punched hole is harder obviously and can be visually confirmed.
Only good thing about your alternative is that haliburton can supply the blanks maybe, at a small premium to the taxpayer...
Electronic voting is inherently insecure. We need to go back to hand counting paper forms, not punch cards. It's better to wait a few days for results than to allow even 1 candidate to steal an election.
Here in California we still use pen and paper too. This shit got voted out of our state!
"Remember, folks, it's not who votes that counts, it's who counts the votes."
---Anonymous
Frankly I'm at some strange level amazed that it's needed to go through lengths to prevent cheating in the US, I thought that americans had some decency at that level at least, but (recent-ish) history shows otherwise of course.
How about the american patriotism? Seems to me that rigging votes is somewhat counter-patriotic.Or the love for the foundation of american democracy and all that jazz?
As a poll worker in this coming election, and more particicularly a machine judge, allow me to educate. I have no idea where this "urban" myth came from, but it's bull shit! None of the machines we'll be using here in Colorado are intercontected except for the electrical connection. The hard drives are completely individual to each machine. Even if an individual attempted to alter the machine in some way to affect the outcome, it would only be on one machine. There would be no way in hell they could damage the results on multiple machines. Second, if you think anyone would allow someone to get to the workings of the machine in order to actually attempt to sabatoge the election, your battyer than a bed bug. It's amazing how ignorance can create fear out of thin air. Princeton had no record of any of this so called experiment. It exists totally in the mind of some ridiculously moronic person.
So how are the results of all the machines tallied then? By a machine perhaps?