[P2P-F] hacking voting machines

[Michel Bauwens]

*Researchers Hack Voting Machine for
$26*<http://www.foxnews.com/scitech/2011/09/30/researchers-hack-voting-machine-for-26/?test=latestnews>
MATT LIEBOWITZ - TechMediaNetwork
*Here is an extraordinary example of corrupt corporatism. Diebold, then
owned by conservative Republicans, was given the contract to create a voting
machine to monitor the nation's most sacred democratic process. It was a
gift from a conservative Republican administration liberally bribed by
campaign contributions to do so. Diebold produced, at great profit to
themselves, a shoddy product an ambitious 12 year could ri! g, and here is
the proof. This reveals the contempt the Right wing managers of this
corporation felt for ordinary Americans.*
Campaigning for the 2012 presidential race has already begun, but what the
candidates don't know is that come election day, hackers could be the ones
whose votes have the biggest impact.

Researchers from the Argonne National Laboratory in Illinois have developed
a hack that, for about $26 and an 8th-grade science education, can remotely
manipulate the electronic voting machines used by millions of voters all
across the U.S.

The researchers, Salon reported, performed their proof-of-concept hack on a
Diebold Accuvote TS electronic voting machine, a type of touchscreen Direct
Recording Electronic (DRE) voting system that is widely used for government
elections.

(Diebold's voting-machine business is now owned by the Denver-based Dominion
Voting Systems, whose e-voting machines are used in about 22 states.)

In a video, Roger Johnston and Jon Warner from Argonne National Laboratory's
Vulnerability Assessment Team demonstrate three different ways an attacker
could tamper with, and remotely take full control, of the e-voting machine
simply by attaching what they call a piece of "alien electronics" into the
machine's circuit board.



The electronic hacking tool consists of a $1.29 microprocessor and a circuit
board that costs about $8. Together with the $15 remote control, which
enabled the researchers to modify votes from up to a half-mile away, the
whole hack runs about $26.

Two of the takeovers show the researchers controlling the buttons on the
keypad despite what the "real" voter enters. But in what Warner called
"probably the most relevant attack for vote tampering," the researchers were
able to blank the e-voting machine's screen for a split-second after the
"vote now" button was pressed. While the screen went dark, they remotely
entered their own numbers into the DRE's keypad.

Johnston explained in the video: "When the voter hits the 'vote now' button
to register his votes, we can blank the screen and then go back and vote
differently and the voter will be unaware that this has happened."

Johnston and Warner say that the ease with which this type of remote hack
could be deployed highlights the need for e-voting machines to be designed
better, with not just cybersecurity, but physical security in mind.

"Spend an extra four bucks and get a better lock," Johnston said. "You don't
have to have state-of-the-art security, but you can do some things were it
takes at least a little bit of skill to get in."

-- 
P2P Foundation: http://p2pfoundation.net  - http://blog.p2pfoundation.net

Connect: http://p2pfoundation.ning.com; Discuss:
http://lists.ourproject.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/p2p-foundation

Updates: http://del.icio.us/mbauwens; http://friendfeed.com/mbauwens;
http://twitter.com/mbauwens; http://www.facebook.com/mbauwens
-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: https://lists.ourproject.org/pipermail/p2p-foundation/attachments/20111002/aeba648b/attachment.htm