Post by Swamp Gas on Sept 27, 2004 12:06:33 GMT -5
www.engadget.com/entry/3622842205228263/
Floridians, beware: monkey can actually hack Diebold voting machines
Posted Sep 27, 2004, 8:00 AM ET by Phillip Torrone
All politics aside, we’re 100% for throwing monkeys at gadgets (both literally and figuratively) to see what they can (and can’t) do with them. In this case, Black Box Voting is suggesting that the Diebold voting machines are so flawed that even monkey can 0wn it. Apparently there’s a a hidden black box0like record keeping program that resides on Diebold’s election software—this is already pretty awful, as vote record keeping should always be paper-based. This application is a “secret” feature enabled by a two-digit trigger (not a “bug” or an accidental oversight; it’s a feature), and apparently even an untrained monkey (the real kind) can get in there and manipulate records. So please don’t blame us if we’re spending a little extra time in the booth trying figure this one out, we shouldn’t be more than a couple of minutes (assuming we’re of comparable intelligence with Baxter the monkey who, if allowed into a voting stall, might rule the free world with a simple hack).
