The Chronicle: Wired Campus Blog: Computer Scientist Takes E-Voting Apart
Computer Scientist Takes E-Voting ApartA Princeton computer scientist said Uncle Sam taught him how easy it can be to hack on the cheap.
Professor and electronic-voting critic Andrew Appel spent only $82 to buy five $5,000 Sequoia electronic voting machines from a government auction Web site last month according to Wired News. It didn’t take long, he said, for he and his students to find security holes in the AVC Advantage machines — one student picked the lock in only 7 seconds, gaining access to the machine’s motherboard and memory chip.
A Sequoia spokeswoman said Mr. Appel exaggerated the machines’ vulnerability and that they were designed to alert headquarters if manipulated. But Mr. Appel suggested that would-be manipulators were capable of anticipating and disabling alarms. —Sierra Millman
::Tullycast:: 