Hackers Show Just How Easy it is To Hack the Vote

CBS News correspondent, Mireya Villarreal, spent some time with some employees of Symantec Security Response; director, Kevin Haley, and researcher, Brian Varner, to determine the ease with which the election results could be tampered.   What she discovered is sickening, if not shocking.

CBS News reports:  …for the hackers at Symantec Security Response, Election Day results could be manipulated by an affordable device you can find online. 

“I can insert it, and then it resets the card, and now I’m able to vote again,” said Brian Varner, a principle researcher at Symantec, demonstrating the device.

The voter doesn’t even need to leave the booth to hack the machine.

“For $15 and in-depth knowledge of the card, you could hack the vote,” Varner said.

Symantec Security Response director Kevin Haley said elections can also be hacked by breaking into the machines after the votes are collected.

“The results go from that machine into a piece of electronics that takes it to the central counting place,” Haley said. “That data is not encrypted and that’s vulnerable for manipulation.”

Read More:  http://www.cbsnews.com/ 

Is there any system that isn’t susceptible to tampering? Probably not. But, going back to punchcard ballots and instituting voter ID laws would certainly make it more difficult than what Mr. Varner and Mr. Haley just described.