I Just Hacked a State Election. I’m 17.

Not me. It's the headline of the article

I Just Hacked a State Election. I’m 17. And I’m Not Even a Very Good Hacker.

I could then see all of its data, including vote tallies, candidate names and tables of basic website functions. Once someone has that kind of access, they can do plenty of damage. First, the organizers instructed us to double candidates’ vote tallies. Then, with the assistance of volunteers, some of us easily changed the names of candidates or even their parties, or inflated the vote tallies to ridiculously high, Putinesque numbers.

The fact that someone as untrained as myself could theoretically bring an election to a screeching halt with nothing but a quick Google search should be a wake-up call. While inflating Gary Johnson’s vote tally to over 90 billion is good for a laugh, a more malicious agent—not to mention a team of well-funded and highly skilled hackers—could do real damage. A close congressional race could be flipped by the addition of a few hundred extra votes, the installation of malware, stolen security credentials, or the shutdown of a website during the final tally, like my escapade last week.

This is not a Russia thread, though Russia is a threat, so is everyone else now.
This is not about Trump's legitimacy.
It is about the legitimacy of our elections in 2018, 2020 and beyond.

Unless we fix our election technology, this could be ANYONE, even a 17 year old kid.

This comes on the heels of steady stream of other frightening news about the State of US election technology.

U.S. Tells 21 States That Hackers Targeted Their Voting Systems
www.nytimes.com...

Russians penetrated U.S. voter systems, top U.S. official says
www.nbcnews.com...

AND if this 17 year old novice programmer hacking an election isn't frightening enough,

An 11-year-old hacked a government website and changed election results at DEFCON

According to DEFCON spokespeople, the kids were offered 13 replicas of Secretary of State websites, with Florida being the first. 11-year-old Emmett Brewster was able to hack it inside 10 minutes.

thenextweb.com...

This is NOT a Partisan Issue. This might be Russia now, but it will be everyone else in the Blink of an eye.

Right Wingers? - Imagine Venezuela, Iran, China or just some rogue socialist hacker team in Silicon Valley deciding they have had enough of the GOP.

If a 17 year old kid can flip an election from a wireless connection at a coffee shop, we need to get going on this if we are going to keep control of our country.

What say you ATS?

a reply to: soberbacchus

Paper ballots and airgapped tally machines.

Problem solved.

He hacked a web page not the election, no actual votes could be changed at these web sites.

So while yes maybe they could slow results, the actual verified numbers would still be unchanged.

originally posted by: Irishhaf
He hacked a web page not the election, no actual votes could be changed at these web sites.

So while yes maybe they could slow results, the actual verified numbers would still be unchanged.

Machines have been tampered with before, in Ohio years and years ago. If I remember correctly is was done using software exploits.

originally posted by: soberbacchus
Not me. It's the headline of the article

I Just Hacked a State Election. I’m 17. And I’m Not Even a Very Good Hacker.

I could then see all of its data, including vote tallies, candidate names and tables of basic website functions. Once someone has that kind of access, they can do plenty of damage. First, the organizers instructed us to double candidates’ vote tallies. Then, with the assistance of volunteers, some of us easily changed the names of candidates or even their parties, or inflated the vote tallies to ridiculously high, Putinesque numbers.

The fact that someone as untrained as myself could theoretically bring an election to a screeching halt with nothing but a quick Google search should be a wake-up call. While inflating Gary Johnson’s vote tally to over 90 billion is good for a laugh, a more malicious agent—not to mention a team of well-funded and highly skilled hackers—could do real damage. A close congressional race could be flipped by the addition of a few hundred extra votes, the installation of malware, stolen security credentials, or the shutdown of a website during the final tally, like my escapade last week.

This is not a Russia thread, though Russia is a threat, so is everyone else now.
This is not about Trump's legitimacy.
It is about the legitimacy of our elections in 2018, 2020 and beyond.

Unless we fix out election technology, this could be ANYONE, even a 17 year old kid.

This comes on the heels of steady stream of other frightening news about the State of US election technology.

U.S. Tells 21 States That Hackers Targeted Their Voting Systems
www.nytimes.com...

Russians penetrated U.S. voter systems, top U.S. official says
www.nbcnews.com...

AND if this 17 year old novice programmer hacking an election isn't frightening enough,

An 11-year-old hacked a government website and changed election results at DEFCON

According to DEFCON spokespeople, the kids were offered 13 replicas of Secretary of State websites, with Florida being the first. 11-year-old Emmett Brewster was able to hack it inside 10 minutes.

thenextweb.com...

This is NOT a Partisan Issue. This might be Russia now, but it will be everyone else in the Blink of an eye.
Right Wingers? - Imagine Venezuela, Iran, China or just some rogue socialist hacker team in Silicon Valley deciding they have had enough of the GOP.

If a 17 year old kid can flip an election from a wireless connection at a coffee shop, we need to get going on this if we are going to keep control of our country.

What say you ATS?

He "hacked" a website. And the article does a great job at showing the incompetence of an uninformed teacher as well.

This kid is no hacker.....that I can promise you.

Let me know when elections are held on websites with built in tables that just auto upload the data....then I might have some cause for concern.

a reply to: soberbacchus

This is not a Russia thread, though Russia is a threat, so is everyone else now.

Everyone else has ALWAYS been a threat. That is one thing lost in the neverending partisan search for ruskies.
This is not new.

en.wikipedia.org...

Filmed over three years it documents American citizens investigating anomalies and irregularities with 'e-voting' (electronic voting) systems that occurred during the 2000 and 2004 elections in the United States, especially in Volusia County, Florida. The film investigates the flawed integrity of electronic voting machines, particularly those made by Diebold Election Systems, exposing previously unknown backdoors in the Diebold trade secret computer software. The film culminates dramatically in the on-camera hacking of the in-use / working Diebold election system in Leon County, Florida - the same computer voting system which has been used in actual American elections across thirty-three states, and which still counts tens of millions of America's votes today.

interesting to see this brought to light now...
www.cnn.com...

originally posted by: Irishhaf
He hacked a web page not the election, no actual votes could be changed at these web sites.

So while yes maybe they could slow results, the actual verified numbers would still be unchanged.

Incorrect.

The Sec of State website is where the county votes are compiled, totaled and reported.

set of tables that make up the state election board’s database
..
state election websites
...
stores data in simple tables containing columns and rows
...
By inputting a command into the search bar to see all the website’s tables, I could then see all of its data, including vote tallies, candidate names and tables of basic website functions. Once someone has that kind of access, they can do plenty of damage. First, the organizers instructed us to double candidates’ vote tallies. Then, with the assistance of volunteers, some of us easily changed the names of candidates or even their parties, or inflated the vote tallies to ridiculously high, Putinesque numbers.

Even if the voting machines are not connected to the internet, voting offices, counties, districts each enter their totals via the internet and state election websites, where they are totaled for results.

How in HADES does everyone miss the major point again ?
This was set up at DEFCON
"For the love of god , Montressor"
It was meant to be hacked....

originally posted by: CriticalStinker
a reply to: soberbacchus

Paper ballots and airgapped tally machines.

Problem solved.

Paper ballots being key.

In 2011, the election board in Pennsylvania’s Venango County — a largely rural county in the northwest part of the state — asked David A. Eckhardt, a computer science professor at Carnegie Mellon University, to examine its voting systems. In municipal and state primaries that year, a few voters had reported problems with machines ‘‘flipping’’ votes; that is, when these voters touched the screen to choose a candidate, the screen showed a different candidate selected. Errors like this are especially troubling in counties like Venango, which uses touch-screen voting machines that have no backup paper trail; once a voter casts a digital ballot, if the machine misrecords the vote because of error or maliciousness, there’s little chance the mistake will be detected.

Eckhardt and his colleagues concluded that the problem with the machines, made by Election Systems & Software (ES&S), was likely a simple calibration error. But the experts were alarmed by something else they discovered. Examining the election-management computer at the county’s office — the machine used to tally official election results and, in many counties, to program voting machines — they found that remote-access software had been installed on it.

Remote-access software is a type of program that system administrators use to access and control computers remotely over the internet or over an organization’s internal network. Election systems are supposed to be air-gapped — disconnected from the internet and from other machines that might be connected to the internet. The presence of the software suggested this wasn’t the case with the Venango machine, which made the system vulnerable to hackers. Anyone who gained remote access to the system could use the software to take control of the machine. Logs showed the software was installed two years earlier and used multiple times, most notably for 80 minutes on November 1, 2010, the night before a federal election.

www.nytimes.com...

He hacked a fake website, designed to be hacked....

With all the buzz starting up, i'm starting to think people are worried about their blue-wave appearing. It's almost like trying to set up a narrative, to explain the foreseen outcome.

I have a different opinion though.... I think the Russians are dedicated to helping the Democrats win the mid-term. A vehement and aggressively opposed Democrat majority facing off against the Republican President ; Shutting down operation, opposition for the sake of opposition locking up the legislature. Grind Government to ahalt for the next two years.

That's Russia's plan ! Do NOT Accept the Democratic victory, it was made in Russia...…
/sarcasm and satire.

a reply to: soberbacchus

Even if the voting machines are not connected to the internet, voting offices, counties, districts each enter their totals via the internet and state election websites, where they are totaled for results.

So are you saying every single step beyond the voting machine is connected to the internet?
Even if every single step is through the internet once the votes are downloaded, you would have to hack every single computer it was on to corrupt every single byte of data.

Hacking a single web site would not change the vote, just slow the validation of the results.

Mark my words...

Just like "No one is coming to tear down statues" or "No one would desecrate a war monument" literally a month before exactly though actions take place... EVERY time a Democrat losses an election, it will be Russia. Everytime a Republican wins, it will be Russia. An independent wins ?!? Russia. Nobody votes third party, must be Russia...

Supreme Court doesn't rule the way you like ? Russia....
City Counsel passes some ordinance.... Russia...
California defaults on State Debt.... Russia...

a reply to: soberbacchus

To clarify since it's unclear in the OP(and I assume on purpose) this was done at a HACKING CONVENTION.

This is very similar to US Democracy voting results no longer valid what now? Children hack outcome in FL It took 10 mins and i'll say the same thing here that I did there:

originally posted by: PsychoEmperor
a reply to: TheJesuit

So at a hacking convention where they made fake websites for the sole purpose of hacking, they were able to hack the websites designed to be hackable.

And this is news?

I've recently been to a zoo where they buried replica fossils, so I'm pretty much an expert at excavation.

a reply to: soberbacchus

Where do I sign up to do this? I'm not interested in hacking- but my web knowledge extends right up to opening a browser and curb stomping ads with an extension or 5. I'd like to see *how* easy it is.

Because if I- lil ol' internet webpage hacking illiterate me can do it- our government is in serious, serious bantha poodoo.

originally posted by: Irishhaf
a reply to: soberbacchus

Even if the voting machines are not connected to the internet, voting offices, counties, districts each enter their totals via the internet and state election websites, where they are totaled for results.

So are you saying every single step beyond the voting machine is connected to the internet?

No. I am saying totals are reported to the SOS websites and those totals, candidate names etc. have been easily hacked.

Even if every single step is through the internet once the votes are downloaded, you would have to hack every single computer it was on to corrupt every single byte of data.

It could be caught and corrected, but not before widespread reporting of the false results, candidate acceptance speeches etc.

Best case scenario would mayhem. Worst case scenario is that some voting district wouldn't notice the fudged difference in votes that their SOS office reported in it's totals.

Hacking a single web site would not change the vote, just slow the validation of the results.

Assuming safeguards and that each voting location checks to make sure the totals they tallied match the totals that the SOS site used in the final tally reported.

Wouldn't it be simpler to amp up the security of the Sec. of State elections reporting websites?

All of this before discussing other methods.

originally posted by: CrawlingChaos
Mark my words...

Just like "No one is coming to tear down statues" or "No one would desecrate a war monument" literally a month before exactly though actions take place... EVERY time a Democrat losses an election, it will be Russia. Everytime a Republican wins, it will be Russia. An independent wins ?!? Russia. Nobody votes third party, must be Russia...

Supreme Court doesn't rule the way you like ? Russia....
City Counsel passes some ordinance.... Russia...
California defaults on State Debt.... Russia...

You didn't read the OP did you?

And BTW Trump and team was 110% Elections are Rigged up until they won.

No doubt the Right Wing will return to that refrain next time they lose an election.

This is a thread about protecting elections for all of us.

a reply to: soberbacchus

I read it. These conventions occur all the time. They use an in house LAN set up for script-kiddies to upload scripts they didn't even write, to local-network website sites setup to accept them.

And BTW Trump and team was 110% Elections are Rigged up until they won.

And ?

This is a thread about protecting elections for all of us.

No it's not. It's about setting a Narrative.

What say you ATS?

Bull crap.

When I voted for Trump I used a paper ballot.

a reply to: soberbacchus

No it would be simpler to go back to the older style with the hanging chads, but that will never happen because rich lobbyists on both sides are making money off the electronic voting machines.

Honestly i'd be more worried about the machine being physically manipulated. Like I Click on the Green Party, but I keep Getting Hillary selected....


Crap.... I forgot the Green Party is a Russian Operative designed to steal votes from Democrats...

I've been compromised !