by Claire Bernish<\/p>\n
A professor from Princeton University and a graduate student just proved electronic voting machines in the U.S. remain astonishingly vulnerable to hackers \u2014 and they did it in under eight minutes.<\/p>\n
In fact, Professor Andrew Appel and grad student Alex Halderman took just seven minutes to break into the authentic Sequoia AVC Advantage electronic voting machine Appel purchased for $82 online \u2014 one of the oldest models, but still in use Louisiana, Pennsylvania, New Jersey, and Virginia, Politico reported.<\/p>\n
After Halderman picked the hulking, 250-pound machine\u2019s lock in seven seconds flat, Appel wrested its four ROM chips from a circuit board \u2014 an easy feat, considering the chips weren\u2019t soldered in place.<\/p>\n
Once freed, Appel could facilely replace the ROM chips with his own version \u201cof modified firmware that could throw off the machine\u2019s results, subtly altering the tally of votes, never to betray a hint to the voter,\u201d<\/em> Politico<\/em>\u2019s Ben Wofford explained<\/a>.<\/p>\n Appel and a team of other so-called cyber-academics have hacked into various models of electronic voting machines in order to prove to the public the equipment is ridiculously bereft of security. Together with Ed Felten, Appel and a group of Princeton students \u201crelentlessly hacked one voting machine after another \u2026 reprogramming one popular machine to play Pac-Man; infecting popular models with self-duplicating malware; [and] discovering keys to voting machine locks that could be ordered on eBay.\u201d<\/em><\/p>\n Their efforts have gone largely ignored for 15 years.<\/p>\n But now, thanks to the explosion of controversy from revealing documents hacked from the DNC \u2014 and as-yet unproven accusations of Russian involvement \u2014 Appel and his colleagues\u2019 persistence has finally garnered the attention it deserves.<\/p>\n If primaries were successfully rigged through corporate media collusion and behind-the-scenes coordination between the Democratic National Committee and Hillary Clinton\u2019s campaign, voters will certainly wonder what\u2019s in store when they cast ballots using deeply-vulnerable electronic voting machines.<\/p>\n Perhaps that lack of security prompted the Department of Homeland Security to declare<\/a> electronic voting machines part of U.S. \u201ccritical infrastructure\u201d<\/em> this week \u2014 a designation<\/a> generally reserved for 16 sectors, including transportation systems, dams, and utilities, among other things \u2014 deemed \u201cso vital to the United States that their incapacitation or destruction would have a debilitating effect on security, national economic security, national public health or safety, or any combination thereof.\u201d<\/em><\/p>\n Now that attention has been given to the ease with which a number of popular, still-employed voting machines can be compromised, officials and voters alike have expressed grave concerns about the upcoming election.<\/p>\n \u201cThis isn\u2019t a crazy hypothetical anymore,\u201d<\/em> Dan Wallach, a computer science professor at Rice and veteran of the team of Princeton \u2018hackers,\u2019 noted<\/a>. \u201cOnce you bring nation states\u2019 cyber activity into the game?\u201d<\/em> he hinted of potential Russian connections to the DNC hack and possible implications of foreign meddling in the national election. \u201cThese machines, they barely work in a friendly environment.\u201d<\/em><\/p>\n Thirty-one prominent security experts with the Aspen Institute Homeland Security Group issued a statement<\/a> in response to the DNC hack at the end of July, imploring precautions be taken because \u201c[o]ur electoral process could be a target for reckless foreign governments and terrorist groups.\u201d<\/em><\/p>\n \u201cLook, we could see 15 years ago that this would be perfectly possible,\u201d <\/em>Appel told<\/a> Wofford. \u201cIt\u2019s well within the capabilities of a country as sophisticated as Russia.\u201d<\/em><\/p>\n He added ominously, \u201cActually, it\u2019s well within the capabilities of much less well-funded and sophisticated attackers.\u201d<\/em><\/p>\n Electronic voting machines hit the U.S. electoral process in full force following the \u2018hanging chad<\/a>\u2019 controversy in the Bush-Gore race in 2000, in which ballots had to be hand-counted. Ludicrous pictures inundated<\/a> the news, showing elections officials assiduously examining paper ballots to determine if partially-punched choices equated actual votes in the tight race \u2014 a scene officials hoped electronic voting machines would avoid repeating.<\/p>\n But those machines presented notorious problems of their own.<\/p>\n As Wofford explained:<\/p>\n \u201cThe Princeton group has a simple message: That the machines that Americans use at the polls are less secure than the iPhones they use to navigate their way there. They\u2019ve see the skeletons of code inside electronic voting\u2019s digital closet, and they\u2019ve mastered the equipment\u2019s vulnerabilities perhaps better than anyone (a contention the voting machine companies contest, of course). They insist the elections could be vulnerable at myriad strike points, among them the software that aggregates the precinct vote totals, and the voter registration rolls that are increasingly digitized. But the threat, the cyber experts say, starts with the machines that tally the votes and crucially keep a record of them \u2014 or, in some cases, don\u2019t.\u201d<\/em><\/p>\n Because this electronic equipment is now horribly outdated \u2014 some machines\u2019 manufacturers no longer offer tech support \u2014 and considered, in large part, a \u2018failed experiment,\u2019 much has been phased out for better options. But not completely \u2014 and those better options still can be easily tampered with, according to Appel and his team.<\/p>\n Indeed, the issues with electronic voting methods are too voluminous to recount in a single article, though Wofford does provide a thorough, albeit lengthy, summary here<\/a>.<\/p>\n As voters prepare to putatively choose the next American president in November, tales of rigged elections \u2014 from the primaries to the presidency \u2014 continue to top headlines across the country. With the sheer mountain of political funny business already evidenced this year, electronic voting machines don\u2019t offer anywhere near the sound comfort of retribution the voting public craves.<\/p>\n