Elections Are Easily Hackable: Princeton Researchers Proved It!

Researchers at Princeton University have finally shows what we were all thinking.  That is, that electronic voting machines can be subverted by installing software which undetectably alters vote totals and spreads itself from one voting machine to the next.

This is a pretty scary thought, but I don't need to go into too much detail on my own thoughts on this.  I'm pretty sure we're all equally and similarly concerned.

According to Electronic Frontier Foundation staff attorney Matt Zimmerman, “This report should finally put to rest the myth that the current generation of e-voting machines adequately protects the integrity of the electoral process,”

This paper presents a fully independent security study of a Diebold AccuVote-TS voting machine, including its hardware and software. We obtained the machine from a private party. Analysis of the machine, in light of real election procedures, shows that it is vulnerable to extremely serious attacks. For example, an attacker who gets physical access to a machine or its removable memory card for as little as one minute could install malicious code; malicious code on a machine could steal votes undetectably, modifying all records, logs, and counters to be consistent with the fraudulent vote count it creates. An attacker could also create malicious code that spreads automatically and silently from machine to machine during normal election activities — a voting-machine. We have constructed working demonstrations of these attacks in our lab. Mitigating these threats will require changes to the voting machine’s hardware and software and the adoption of more rigorous election procedures. — Security Analysis of the Diebold AccuVote-TS Voting Machine

Apparently it also isn't too difficult to gain access to the machines to make this possible.

They posted a video of their successful attempt.  Check it out below:




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