US voting machines used in 18 states can be hacked in under 2 minutes; DEFCON video shows
On Sunday, we wrote a piece about the vulnerability of the U.S. voting system infrastructure and vote tampering or switching could be carried in real-time. In one of the videos, we saw how “vote switching” happened on election night in a live election coverage on CNN. You can see the video here. Apparently, it turned out that various cybersecurity groups have been warning the government about the vulnerability of U.S. election infrastructure since 2018.
In a 2018 footage from a DEFCON hacker conference in Las Vegas, one attendee at the annual Las Vegas hacker convention revealed how voting machines used in 18 states can be compromised in two minutes without special tools or advanced knowledge.
In this alarming video, SocialProof Security CEO Rachel Tobac shows how an election machine used in most states can be easily compromised in seconds with no tools needed. The 2-minute demonstration is a further reminder of how the US election infrastructure is alarmingly susceptible to ulterior motives.
In the video, Tobac explains that accessing the voting machine’s administrative functions is as easy as removing the hood with a release button, unplugging the card reader, picking the lock to turn on the machine — which she says can be done with a ballpoint pen — and pressing the bright red “on” button. After the machine boots up, a “secure voting terminal” loads on the screen. An error message pops up, but Tobac presses “cancel” and “okay” on the screen, which takes her to the catalog of voting data.
The hacked voting machine — which appears to be a Premier AccuVote TS or TSX — was just one of several features in the conferences Voting Village exhibit, which showed how decidedly old-school voting technology could be easily compromised. The voting machine has been the subject of scrutiny before but is still used.
Another version of the video can be found here.