(Monday PO) A hacker bought a voting machine on eBay. Michigan officials are now investigating

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(Monday PO) A hacker bought a voting machine on eBay. Michigan officials are now investigating

Post by GuideToACrazyWorld » Mon Sep 12, 2022 2:23 am

https://www.npr.org/2022/09/08/11216821 ... vestigatin

Harri Hursti has bought about 200 used voting machines without incident, but the one he purchased on eBay last month is now the subject of a state investigation, with Michigan officials determined to find out how the device ended up for sale online.

"We are actively working with law enforcement to investigate allegations of an illegal attempt to sell a voter assist terminal acquired in Michigan," Secretary of State Jocelyn Benson, who is up for reelection in November, announced in a statement last week.

And, in an additional tweet, Benson noted that the voting machine was originally from Wexford County and clarified that it was not used to tabulate ballots. (The Dominion-made apparatuses are built to function as voting machines or ballot printing devices. In Michigan, they were used to print voter ballots.)
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The U.S. Election Assistance Commission says voting machines should be meticulously inventoried and kept under lock and key "in a tamper-proof location, preferably within the election office."

Hursti is a cybersecurity expert who is often contracted by state-level election officials to test vulnerabilities in voting machines. That's why he bought the Dominion ImageCast X machine as soon as he saw it online, he told NPR during a phone interview.

"I've never taken a look inside one of those," he said, with some excitement.
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He forked over $1,200 then, in an effort to clarify any lingering questions about the ImageCast X's provenance, he sent an email to Michigan's secretary of state office alerting them of the deal. It's something he does whenever he buys a device online, he explained.
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It's a good thing he did.

"They didn't know a device was missing until they started looking to see if there's a missing machine," Hursti said. "They really had no idea, and that is one of the biggest dangers" to election security.

As of Wednesday, the machine was still in the same unopened box it arrived in nearly two weeks ago. Hursti said he is waiting on the FBI or some other law enforcement agency to pick up the 2020 device from his home in Connecticut.

"I'm waiting to find out if it was stolen — that would make [the sale] illegal — or not. If it was not, then the machine is mine and I can get started" on his analysis, he said.

CNN has reported that the eBay seller, Ean Hutchison, who lives in Ohio, found the Dominion-made machine on a Michigan Goodwill website for just $7.99. He snapped it up then immediately put it up for sale on eBay.

Hutchison did not respond to NPR's requests for comment.
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In the post on eBay, Hutchison stated that the device had been used in "the most recent Michigan elections."

Meanwhile, Michigan is one of several swing states, including Georgia and Colorado, where officials have launched investigations into possible election tampering or interference by Donald Trump supporters who hope to subvert the 2020 election. In nearly all cases, the election deniers claim they are searching for evidence of voter fraud.

For Hursti, one of the greatest threats to voting devices is not necessarily hacking, but human incompetence.

The 54-year-old is an expert in the field. He's been featured in two documentaries — Kill Chain: The Cyber War On America's Elections and the Emmy-nominated film, Hacking Democracy — that pull the curtain back on the U.S. election system. Both offer an unnerving glimpse into the weaknesses of today's election technology.
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He said he's seen instances where election officials or polling place volunteers inadvertently mishandle devices or do not follow security protocols.

"They just don't have the proper training," he said.

In other cases, people simply fail to keep track of the machines. "They leave them behind someplace and just totally forget them," he said, adding that there was one instance in which an election device was left behind at a hotel for more than a year. "The hotel called and tried to tell them they left it but no one ever called back. So they sold it, which is legal for them to do."

For those not in the know, Hursti said it sounds shocking to hear that voting machines can be bought and sold for little money.

"People think it's a big deal but it happens all the time. Most of the time the seller is a government, a county, or it is electric recycling. ... And it is a good thing because hackers are a resource to make things safer."

Hackers like him, he said, are not interested in weaponizing the weaknesses they find. "The reason you pop open the machine is to learn the vulnerabilities" of each machine, in order to safeguard democracy, he added.

And there are plenty of other machines to tinker with, while he waits for the Michigan investigation to unfold.

"I bought two others last month, so I'll get started on those," he said.



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Re: (Monday PO) A hacker bought a voting machine on eBay. Michigan officials are now investigating

Post by Tarmaque » Mon Sep 12, 2022 3:02 am

This actually smells fishy. Not the guy who bought it on eBay or the guy who bought it from Goodwill, but how it got to Goodwill to begin with. It sounds like someone trying to false-flag into "proving" how insecure the election was. I'll be interested to see what they find when they get to the bottom of this.

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Re: (Monday PO) A hacker bought a voting machine on eBay. Michigan officials are now investigating

Post by Senor Natural » Mon Sep 12, 2022 6:36 pm

Tarmaque wrote:
Mon Sep 12, 2022 3:02 am
This actually smells fishy. Not the guy who bought it on eBay or the guy who bought it from Goodwill, but how it got to Goodwill to begin with. It sounds like someone trying to false-flag into "proving" how insecure the election was. I'll be interested to see what they find when they get to the bottom of this.
I agree.

News says Turnip declared that he simply wasn't going to leave the WH after he lost the election.
I guess he thought the country would rise up for him.
Other than Jan.6th no one did, and only then, there were just about 80,000 of them at highest estimates.
Various civil rights protests drew more people than that.
In reality, he is not all that popular at all with the huge majority of America, and what popularity he retains is decreasing daily.

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Re: (Monday PO) A hacker bought a voting machine on eBay. Michigan officials are now investigating

Post by Tarmaque » Mon Sep 12, 2022 7:21 pm

Senor Natural wrote:
Mon Sep 12, 2022 6:36 pm
News says Turnip declared that he simply wasn't going to leave the WH after he lost the election.
There was lots of speculation about that even before the election. He's such a child and spoiled bully.

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Re: (Monday PO) A hacker bought a voting machine on eBay. Michigan officials are now investigating

Post by GuideToACrazyWorld » Mon Sep 12, 2022 10:40 pm

Tarmaque wrote:
Mon Sep 12, 2022 3:02 am
This actually smells fishy. Not the guy who bought it on eBay or the guy who bought it from Goodwill, but how it got to Goodwill to begin with. It sounds like someone trying to false-flag into "proving" how insecure the election was. I'll be interested to see what they find when they get to the bottom of this.
The whole voting machine thing is pretty funny. Prior to 2020 the only people I heard worry about them were Registered Democrats. Then 2020 hit and all of a sudden Republican started worrying about it, and most Democrats decided it wasn't a big deal. It's almost like they go out of their way to disagree.

From someone who has worked in the industry for a very long time, it really has been blown out of proportion. Yes, people have found that if they can sit down at a machine completely monitored and boot into the OS they are pretty easy to manipulate. Of course in order to do this you have to open the machine up. Something that I'm pretty sure would be noticed by any staff at the polling place. So you'd have to open up a big box, and have a decent tech and a couple of minutes to do it. Stuffing a ballot box can be done by anyone in seconds. So, yeah. Really not a concern.

A more valid concern in this area is the manufacturers being hacked and someone injecting something into the code that gets missed in QA. A couple years ago an exploit was injected into Solarwinds code, and this exploit was used to hack hundreds of companies and government agencies. Solarwinds is an extremely large and knowledgeable software manufacturer. They specialize in complex monitoring tools, as well as a some security tools. So, frankly if it can happen to them it can happen to anyone. This is easily mitigated by keeping all code for voting machines on a closed network with no connection to the internet. I think this should be law. To be clear there is 0 evidence on such an attack on voting machines. But the potiential is real and should be delt with.

Instead we keep worrying about guys who prove if they get time alone with a machine they can hack them. Well... ok.

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Re: (Monday PO) A hacker bought a voting machine on eBay. Michigan officials are now investigating

Post by Tarmaque » Tue Sep 13, 2022 2:23 am

GuideToACrazyWorld wrote:
Mon Sep 12, 2022 10:40 pm
Instead we keep worrying about guys who prove if they get time alone with a machine they can hack them. Well... ok.
I'm not too concerned about any of this as long as there are paper ballots. The ones we get from our mail-in system are relatively foolproof. Yeah it would be theoretically possible to hack the machines that read them, but then you could always do a recount with new machines and compare. Last resort you do a hand recount. Pain in the ass, but not a catastrophic one.

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