Hardware Hacking a Voting Machine in 4 Minutes

goombah99 writes "Bev Harris of BlackBoxVoting.org has acquired an actual Diebold Acu-vote ballot scanner. Rummaging through King County's trash, she managed to get her hands on some of their tags and seals. She has since demonstrated a successful penetration of the seals without breaking them ... all in under 4 minutes with no training or technical skills required. There's a nice how-to with photos over at Verified Voting New Mexico." More from goombah99 below.

"The demo is particularly relevant in light of the recent experience in Ohio in which there were large discrepancies between the electronic record and the paper trail, and also since many counties still permit the machines to be taken home by individuals before voting day (as a means of distributing them to precincts). These 'sleepover' machines were involved in the contentious narrow-margin San Diego Election, and are in continued practice in many states. Moreover, it's common practice for counties to contract out deliveries to third parties, such as in New Mexico where in one election, unlicensed delivery drivers took the machines on an unauthorized field trip and only got caught when they crashed the delivery truck after a stop at Hooters. The good news here is that the penetrated Diebold system in the photo essay is an optical scan system. It's not a touchscreen electronic voting system, so there is a paper trail. What hack really shows is that without mandatory random spot checks on the paper ballots, these may be as potentially vulnerable as the touchscreen direct recording electronic voting systems. It's perhaps worth noting that the open source voting system being developed by the Open Voting Consortium features a 100% reconciliation of every single paper ballot with an independent electronic record."

As Seen on TV!

[Hahnsoo]

Their idea of a security update probably will amount to a flashy new star-shaped sticker over the rim of the case that says "Now with new tougher security action! 25% more secure than our previous model!"

The Terrorists Have Won!

[MuNansen]

I'm sure some pundit on Fox will talk about how doing this just "tells people how to fix elections," like videogames teach to kill, the internet teaches how to make bombs, etc.

obligatory

[gsn]

In Soviet Russia machine cast your vote for you... wait shit that happens here too

Most gratuitous use of Javascript yet!

[darien]

Impressive. They hacked a Diebold voting machine in less time than it took me to work out how to navigate their photo-story!

Re:So okay wait.

[MindStalker]

I'm more worried about what will happen if the Democrats don't win. I'll have to hear about it for years to come.. :(

Try again.

[therpham]

The seals! They do nothing!

Re:Cue law suit in three... two...

[mOdQuArK!]

Not necessarily.

There's a pretty funny story in Portland, Oregon where local law enforcement was caught going through various peoples' trash, and they claimed that once the trash had been put out on the curb (never mind that in some cases the trash was still on the peoples' properties), that it was available to the public.

Whereupon one of the local papers took it upon themselves to look through the Mayor's & the Chief of Police's trash, and reported what they found. Fortunately for the two officials, they didn't have anything condemning in their trash, but apparently the Mayor was absolutely furious (and of course was making suing noises), whereas the Police Chief seemed to be a bit more stoic.

I think I hunted down the link here [wweek.com]. It was quite awhile ago, so they might've passed a law by now that protects officials (but not ordinary citizens of course) from such shenanigans.

Nah.

[sammy baby]

I've seen plenty of mistakes trocier than that.

Re:why is it secured in the first place?

[Anonymous Coward]

Is there no encryption used, no message authentication? Is there no protocol whereby officials at least sign off on a print-out containing the count, and some checksums? Wouldn't there need to be no need to secure the card itself? I mean, the machine (and it's RAM), obviously, but the card should only contain a copy of the results - a copy that will be in tomorrows papers anyway.

No, I think you have the wrong country!

Re:My Perception Has Changed Again

[drinkypoo]

BTW, if you aren't up on your Louisiana political history, the crook won.

We're talking about politics here. It doesn't matter who won, that's still true.

Re:So okay wait.

[Paladin144]

Personally, I don't care who fixes the system as long as the system is fixed.

Oh, don't worry; the system is definitely fixed. Very fixed.

Re:I've seen it hacked faster

[Lehk228]

easy way to check, pull up in a large black van marked 'INS' the ones who scatter are the illegals

Re:My Perception Has Changed Again

[__aajfby9338]

Ten minutes later:

homeless person: "Want a camera? Only $20."

random guy on street corner: "How about I give you this sixpack of beer instead?"

homeless person: "Sold."

;-)

why screw with the hardware ?

[Anonymous Coward]

pfftt ... every one of them is vulnerable from the main screen ... up up down down left right left right A B select start - whamo ! you're in !

Re:I've seen it hacked faster

[KarmaMB84]

Yeah, right. We all know that one of them simply walks up to the INS agents, waves his hand and says "these are not the aliens you're looking for" and the INS agents simply walk away.

Re:Until someone does this in an actual election..

[Anonymous Coward]

OK OK, whoever hacked the 2004 election, come out with it already so the public can be outraged and throw you out of office.

we're almost there!

[mikemulvaney]

This is getting close, but its still too difficult to deal with a modchip. Someone stick "007 Agent Under Fire" in there and get a softmod working.