Friday, August 21, 2009

EVMs: hackable, crackable, hijackable

aug 21st, 2009

---------- Forwarded message ----------
From: S. Kalyanaraman

Voting machines: hackable, crackable, hijackable

August 19, 5:15 PM · Garry Reed - Dallas Libertarian Examiner

According to a Raw Story write-up from August 12, 2009, a party of profs and post grads from Cal – San Diego, Michigan, and Princeton universities hacked into an electronic voting machine and tainted the tally.

They wanted to prove that criminals (their euphemism for Democrat or Republican Party operatives?) could start from scratch with no source codes or inside info, find a weakness, hack the security, and develop their own attack software.

They proved that someone could easily break into the machines the night before an election and install hacking software that would alter the results on election day – all without detection.

Their educational caper cost $100,000; a pittance compared to most politicians' political campaign purses.

And yet the brainiac "experts" keep telling us voting machines are spoof-proof.

If you don't believe that everything is hackable, crackable or hijackable, vote counters included, consider just a scant handful of recent reports:

From Fox News, August 17, 2009 – Three hackers were indicted in an identity theft case that netted over 130 million credit and debit card numbers, along with other account info, stolen from three corporations, including the Dallas-based 7-Eleven convenience store chain. This easily eclipsed the previous American Indoor Hacking record...

From InfoWorld, July 27, 2009 – Internet hosting company Network Solutions announced that someone dipped their illicit software snares into the company's digital pool and fished out half a million of their customer's credit card numbers.

A letter sent to merchants who use their Ecommerce Hosting services admitted that somebody gained "unauthorized access to credit card account numbers, names and addresses of some of your customers."

From Wired, July 31, 2009 - Pentagon hacker and 9/11 truther Gary McKinnon is set to be extradited back to the U.S. from England where he faces trial for hacking into 97 computers, including 53 Army, 26 Navy, 16 NASA, and 1 each Department of Defense and Air Force, between February 2001 and March 2002.

He's also accused of crashing some systems, deleting critical files, shutting down the Army's Military District of Washington network of over 2,000 computers for 24 hours, and in general causing over $700,000 in damages.

McKinnon, whose hacker handle is "Solo," insists he was on a moral crusade in search of evidence of a UFO cover-up by the military.

From LewRockwell.com, August 13, 2009 – In an article on the libertarian website, Paul Green tells the tale of a teenaged boy jailed for "swatting" his online-gaming adversaries. First, he tracked down a person's IP address. Next, he hacked his intended victim's internet provider for personal details. Then, spoofing (faking) his target's telephone number, he made an emergency call that resulted in armed SWAT teams invading his opponent's house.

And for local readers...

From Dallas Business Journal, September 19, 2008 – Ready for another hacking term? Reflashing. Dallas was a "hotbed of hackers" last year when TracFone filed 13 lawsuites against 50-plus Dallas-area businesses and individuals who bought the phones in bulk, reflashed them so they could be used on other wireless networks, and resold them for a profit.

If every kind of giga-gadget and digital widget from military mainframes to remotely started keyless-entry security-encoded nose hair trimmers can be hacked, is it any wonder that libertarians have long looked askance not only at electronic voting machines but at the very concept of voting itself? Some still check a box for the perceived "lesser of two evils" while others pull nothing but the Libertarian lever.

But why bother when your choice of Charlie can be changed to Charlene without you ever knowing it?

The state mandating more electronic voting machines just gives more props to libertarians who refuse to vote at all on the principle that voting only serves to encourage the out-of-wedlock reprobates who run for public power.

Working within the system means getting grifted by the system.

So figure it out for yourself:

1. It has long been proved by constant hacks and virus attacks that any good geek with off-the-shelf gear is light years ahead of the government-academic-corporate rocket scientist security experts, including the colossal computer corporations who stand to make millions by selling vulnerable voting devices to the politicos.

2. Every electronic voting machine in the nation is under the control of some government entity at some level.

3. Trust them like you trust the dope-smoking mope next door who wants to diddle your daughter.

http://www.examiner.com/x-1449-Dallas-Libertarian-Examiner~y2009m8d19-Voting-machines-hackable-crackable-hijackable

http://sites.google.com/site/hindunew/electronic-voting-machines


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