[LINK] Hackers break into voting machines in minutes at hacking competition

Bernard Robertson-Dunn brd at iimetro.com.au
Sun Jul 30 15:31:22 AEST 2017


Hackers break into voting machines in minutes at hacking competition
By John Bowden
07/29/17
The Hill
http://thehill.com/policy/cybersecurity/344488-hackers-break-into-voting-machines-in-minutes-at-hacking-competition

Hackers at at a competition in Las Vegas were able to successfully
breach the software of U.S. voting machines in just 90 minutes on
Friday, illuminating glaring security deficiencies in America's election
infrastructure.

Tech minds at the annual "DEF CON" in Las Vegas were given physical
voting machines and remote access, with the instructions of gaining
access to the software.

According to a Register report, within minutes, hackers exposed glaring
physical and software vulnerabilities across multiple U.S. voting
machine companies' products.

Some devices were found to have physical ports that could be used to
attach devices containing malicious software. Others had insecure Wi-Fi
connections, or were running outdated software with security
vulnerabilities like Windows XP.

The Register reported that the challenge was designed by Jake Braun, the
Chief Executive Officer of Cambridge Global Advisors and Managing
Director of Cambridge Global Capital.

“Without question, our voting systems are weak and susceptible. Thanks
to the contributions of the hacker community today, we've uncovered even
more about exactly how,” Braun said.

“The scary thing is we also know that our foreign adversaries –
including Russia, North Korea, Iran – possess the capabilities to hack
them too, in the process undermining principles of democracy and
threatening our national security.”

The machines were bought on Ebay, and were manufactured by major U.S.
voting machine companies such as Diebold Nixorf, Sequoia Voting Systems,
and Winvote.

In January, President Trump signed an executive order establishing a
commission to investigate possible voter fraud in the 2016 election.

The commission, chaired by Vice President Mike Pence, is expected to
“study the registration and voting processes used in Federal elections”
as well as “fraudulent voter registrations and fraudulent voting," the
order says. Trump himself has made baseless claims about millions of
illegal voters during the 2016 election.

“You can never really find, you know, there are going to be — no matter
what numbers we come up with there are going to be lots of people that
did things that we're not going to find out about,” Trump said in
January. "But we will find out because we need a better system where
that can't happen.”

-- 

Regards
brd

Bernard Robertson-Dunn
Sydney Australia
email: brd at iimetro.com.au
web:   www.drbrd.com
web:   www.problemsfirst.com
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