Pac-Man Hacked Onto a Touch-Screen Voting Machine Without Breaking 'Tamper-Evident' Seals

Same systems to be used by millions of voters this November...

Posted By Brad Friedman On 21st August 2010 @ 12:48

Sequoia's voting machines, used in some 20% of U.S. elections, employ Intellectual Property (IP) still owned by a Venezuelan firm tied to Hugo Chavez. Sequoia itself is now owned by a Canadian firm called Dominion. (Though Dominion, like Sequoia itself before it, lied about the continuing Venezuelan/Chavez ties in its recent announcement of the acquisition, as detailed exclusively by The BRAD BLOG ^[1], to little notice, in June.)

The Pac-Man hack onto the Sequoia/Dominion voting machine was revealed this week. It was accomplished without breaking any of the "tamper-evident" seals that voting machine companies and election officials claim are used to ensure nobody can physically hack into them without being discovered.

"We received the machine with the original tamper-evident seals intact," the hackers from Princeton and University of Michigan report ^[2]. "The software can be replaced without breaking any of these seals, simply by removing screws and opening the case."