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

The overall premise of the thread is election security.

We must advance that, integrate a system in conjunction with an ID to verify citizens, manually input their SS# as a second means of clearance and the vote, ending it with a registered voting RNG PIN to close it all out.

A bit much? Naw, that's the soft part, the next one is decent hardened hardware as well.

a reply to: soberbacchus

You know what that kid did there was exploit a poorly written website.

Normally, you should not be able to execute SQL Injection Attacks on a properly written website.

There's way to mitigate that sort of thing. Using Views, Paramaterized Queries, etc.

It's not that these sorts of websites are unsafe but that it was created in a way that was poorly made and vulnerable.

a reply to: Irishhaf

While you are correct on that, however, there are 5 states that do not have a paper trail, all of such is done by computer. Now if the main tally machine is say transmitted to a central computer, that can be hacked, it is possible to change the outcome of an election, to the point where another candidate or even party could be declared the winner, even against all odds.

a reply to: soberbacchus


BUT BUT ....HANGING CHADS!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

a reply to: grey580

It is my understanding that the site was a copy of Florida's SOS election site.

originally posted by: sdcigarpig
a reply to: Irishhaf

While you are correct on that, however, there are 5 states that do not have a paper trail,

Louisiana: Georgia: South Carolina: New Jersey: Delaware

a reply to: soberbacchus

Of course it was Flori-duh.

I'm not surprised.

originally posted by: CrawlingChaos
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 !

That's something that a lot of entities don't take into account, supply chain security. How do you know the device you received is the one you ordered with no tweaks? Are these vendor serviceable machines? I'll admit these devices aren't in my wheelhouse and I haven't studied as much as I would have liked. That being said if a vendor can plug in/remote in, there's a vector right there. Interesting topic in general, I need to read some more up on it.

a reply to: soberbacchus

Webpage hacking is pointless and useless.

originally posted by: OccamsRazor04
a reply to: soberbacchus

Webpage hacking is pointless and useless.

Oh contraire !

Hacking a webpage, design to be hacked by script-kiddies is exactly the kinda proof we need, to prove Russian collusion !


EDIT: /sarcasm
(incase that's necessary)

a reply to: soberbacchus

Yes, so what is to stop a hacker from getting in there already and putting in say a virus, or program, or even ultimately changing the numbers when they get in, taking votes from one group and applying it to another, or as was put out, adding votes that show that far more people voted than is in the district?

With no paper trail no way to verify the numbers, it could and will cause far more problems in the long run, and then the claims that would be right, of vote tampering.

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.

Doesn't amount to a meaningful outside attack.

One problem I see with many of these SOS websites, and other election-related information technology systems, is that proper security practices are pretty far down on the list of priorities. So, properly trained systems engineers need to be involved in building and testing these networks; as well as be involved in systems deployment to the voting precincts.

Furthermore, election officials at the voting precincts need to follow proper security practices. During the recount effort following the 2016 election, there were several precincts that could not review the vote totals because of human errors committed by these oblivious election officials.

Another issue that is overlooked is the psychological impact of having one or more of these systems hacked. Even if the erroneous data is backed out and replaced with valid data, the damage is already done. A great many people will have less faith in our election process. And the validity of the election itself may be questioned and considered invalid regardless of how deeply the aggregation and reporting systems were actually penetrated.

An enemy may not necessarily be interested in altering the outcome of an election. But their main goal may simply be to introduce chaos into the election process itself. Even after the completion of the election, such a PSYOP could hinder the elected officials from effectively performing their duties because of questions about their validity.

This should be a partisan-free conversation because any attack on our election process is an attack on the US itself.

-dex

a reply to: soberbacchus

Part of my heartburn with this electronic "tampering" stuff over the past 2 years is that the real outrage over it seems to rely heavily on belief in a lie to begin with. The lie is that this country's elections possessed some magically iron clad legitimacy to begin with. Let's be frank here, it has long been in evidence that the higher profile US elections were manipulated heavily to ensure the establishment received their intended candidate. That manipulation has been as innocuous as financially buttressing the two candidate desired to ensure they each got the party nomination all the way to things as disturbing as accusations of outright invented numbers being used as the final tallies.

This nation's elections have long been deserving of questions against their legitimacy. A return to the system in which a handful of elites tell us who we want to lead the nation and then coronate him or her in a grand showing while repeating "democracy" over and over until the pleebs believe it is honestly as distasteful to me as the idea of a bunch of pimple faced geeks hacking the system and picking the winner is.

The politicians are fake.
The election results are untrustable.

So why all of the hullabaloo?

a reply to: soberbacchus


I see more of these hacking the election stories and it makes me think the democrats know they are not going to win the house back in the midterms and they are already forming a story and excuse for why they did not win. They will never admit that any election republicans win was won fairly, it will always be hacking, interference etc.