Hacked DC School Board E-Voting Elects Bender President

[Up2Late]

(I know this is old news, I think it's worth repeating for anyone who missed it)


http://www.verifiedvotingfoundation.org/article.php?id=6846

by Andrew Tarantola, Gizmodo
March 2nd, 2012

Yes, that Bender. The one on the left. A University of Michigan team got him elected to the Washington DC school board in 2010 by hacking the district's electronic absentee ballot system.

In 2010, the school board in Washington DC had just erected a new electronic voting system for its absentee constituents. To test the system—given the paltry performance of e-voting systems in the past—the school board opened the system to public scrutiny and challenged them to hack it in four days during the lead-up to the election.

Alexander Halderman, a professor at the University of Michigan, along with two grad students, took up the challenge, "How often do you get the chance to hack a government network without the possibility of going to jail...?"

<snip>

...Even after changing the systems log out screen to read "Owned" and play the University of Michigan fight song, it took system admins a solid two days to discover the changes. They only noticed when another team told them the system was secure but complained of the music when logging off. Even more amusing, while the Michigan team was rummaging around inside the system, they took the liberty of blocking intrusion attempts from other teams including those from a Persian University, India, and China....

[shraby]

1. I remember reading about that! It's still funny.