Hackers at the Las Vegas’ annual DEF CON event took over electronic voting machines in a display of a simulation run for the White House proving that rigging an election is indeed possible, something that many researchers have warned about for several years.
It took under 90 minutes for hackers to physically break down the 30 voting machines and discover weaknesses in their defenses, The Register UK reported.
Of the 30 voting booths, the hardware and software were manufactured by Diebold, Sequoia and Winvote.
Hackers proved the low level of security that voting machines have had which has been known for years; even a former Diebold contractor whistleblower, Chris Hood, told of the weakness of security and how easily voting machines can be exploited.
One of the voting booths was wirelessly hacked by a hacker proving that you only need to be near it and in range, not physically next to it, to exploit the system’s software like how Princeton University demonstrated 10 years ago.
“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,” Jake Braun, a hacker 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 the principles of democracy and threatening our national security.
The other main issue isn’t physical voting but rather allowing voters to vote online. It’s convenience vs. security. A whopping 30 states offered voters the option of online voting despite the fact that it was known by security researchers to be vulnerable during the 2016 election last year. That’s enough states to flip the vote and nullify democracy.
Online voting is not secure and can be heavily tampered with finding various vulnerabilities in outdated software and hardware alike.
Finally, the last issue is bribing programmers or the poll workers who are supposed to oversee the election as Diebold programmer Clinton Eugene Curtis alleged when he testified that Tom Feeney (Speaker of the House of Florida at the time) told him to rig election counts for a paycheck.
Numbers don’t match up, time and time again in the exit polls; as investigator Richard Charin found, the polls don’t match up some by a whopping 10% or more.
Everything is working according to plan and the sheepish American public, as a congressman known only as Congressman X inferred in his book, are following right along with no objection; therefore, we are consenting to all this mistreatment and perversion of democracy.
SCREW THE NEXT GENERATION’ AND ‘HARRY REID’S A POMPOUS A**’: DEMOCRATIC CONGRESSMAN X WRITES ANONYMOUS TELL-ALL BOOK SLAMMING ‘NATION OF NAIVE, SELF-ABSORBED SHEEP’ AS HE ADMITS HE NEVER READS BILLS HE VOTES ON. ~ CONGRESSMAN X
Although the machines the hackers breached were not fully secured, according to The Register UK, it reveals the potential for damage that is possible.
The good news is that we have three years to fix our current voting problems and structure, but that’s only if voting for a new establishment head even matters.
Aaron Kesel writes for Activist Post. Follow us at Twitter and Steemit. This article is Creative Commons and can be republished in full with attribution.
Image Credit: chrisdiontewalker
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