This is certainly not going to inspire confidence in the country’s election infrastructure, particularly during a time when glaring questions about election meddling have yet to be answered. White hat hackers at the annual DEF CON conference in Las Vegas were able to successfully hack into U.S. voting machines. They were able to do this in just 90 minutes, which is both impressive and highly unsettling at the same time.
Several very skilled hackers attending the annual DEF CON conference in Las Vegas were given access to physical U.S. voting machines and remote access. They had just one job, to gain access to the machine’s software.
According to reports, it took the hackers only minutes to expose critical physical and software vulnerabilities across different voting machines made by different companies.
They found that some voting machines had physical ports which could be used to connect devices with malicious software. Others relied on insecure Wi-Fi connections or were simply running outdated software like Windows XP.
“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,” said Jake Braun, the CEO of Cambridge Global Advisors. Braun was the one who designed this challenge for the ethical hackers.
The machines used in this challenge were manufactured by major voting machine companies in the United States, inclduing Diebold Nixorf and Winvote. They were bought on eBay.
Diebold voting machines have been used all over the place. And look what hackers can do to them. (Via @0xDUDE) pic.twitter.com/9BJZPgL8N4
— Carl Miller (@carljackmiller) July 29, 2017
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