By Michael Sullivan
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This is certainly not going to inspire confidence in the country’s election infrastructure, particularly during a time when glaring questions about election meddling have yet to be answered. White hat hackers at the annual DEF CON conference in Las Vegas were able to successfully hack into U.S. voting machines. They were able to do this in just 90 minutes, which is both impressive and highly unsettling at the same time.
Several very skilled hackers attending the annual DEF CON conference in Las Vegas were given access to physical U.S. voting machines and remote access. They had just one job, to gain access to the machine’s software.
According to reports, it took the hackers only minutes to expose critical physical and software vulnerabilities across different voting machines made by different companies.
They found that some voting machines had physical ports which could be used to connect devices with malicious software. Others relied on insecure Wi-Fi connections or were simply running outdated software like Windows XP.
“Without question, our voting systems are weak and susceptible. Thanks to the contributions of the hacker community today, we’ve uncovered even more about exactly how,” said Jake Braun, the CEO of Cambridge Global Advisors. Braun was the one who designed this challenge for the ethical hackers.
The machines used in this challenge were manufactured by major voting machine companies in the United States, inclduing Diebold Nixorf and Winvote. They were bought on eBay.
Diebold voting machines have been used all over the place. And look what hackers can do to them. (Via @0xDUDE) pic.twitter.com/9BJZPgL8N4
— Carl Miller (@carljackmiller) July 29, 2017
U.S. Voting Machines Hacked In Just 90 Minutes , original content from Ubergizmo. Read our Copyrights and terms of use.
Hackers, the good ones, have a completely different relationship to technology than we do. They’re able to use the machines that we use daily in ways that some of us can’t even imagine. They can use technology to accomplish tasks that some of us can’t even comprehend. Take the team from SparkFun Electronics, for example, they used a cheap robot to unlock a leading-brand combination safe live on stage at the annual DEF CON conference in Las Vegas.
The team of ethical hackers used the robot to open a SentrySafe live on stage in under 30 minutes. There are more than a million possible combinations for a safe of this kind so it’s impossible to try them all out manually.
The robot brings down the number of possible combinations from one million to just 1,000. It then automatically tries the combinations quickly and filters them all out until it finds the one that opens the safe.
In the live demonstration, it took the robot less than 30 minutes to find out that the combination to that particular SentrySafe was 51.36.93 and it proceeded to open the safe to rapturous applause from the audience.
The robot used by the team costs $200 and is made up of 3D printed parts that can be replaced easily to crack combination safes from different brands.
It reduces the number of possible combinations by detecting the size of indents on the dial. The indent for the correct last digits will be slightly larger than those for the incorrect digits. This enabled the team to figure out that the final number was 93.
The other two numbers can’t be measured in this manner but finding the final one significantly reduces the number of possible combinations.
“That was one of the scariest things we’ve done. Lots of things can go wrong, and this was a very big audience,” Nathan Siedle of SparkFun told the BBC.
Robot Cracks Combination Safe Live On Stage , original content from Ubergizmo. Read our Copyrights and terms of use.
Women are calling the shots on the show.
One Twitter user noticed something creepy about the restaurant’s locations.
The Maine Republican remains defiant.
You’d eat dirt if they promoted and packaged it well enough.
Christine McGinn, herself transgender, won’t let her patients go without care.
There’s no denying the fact that Twitter needs to make money. Its earnings results over the past quarters show that the company has been burning money. Twitter reported a loss of $116 million in the second quarter of this year compared to the $107 million loss they declared in the same period last year. It needs to earn more money and Twitter is trying to open up a new revenue stream by launching a $99 per month service that automatically promotes users’ tweets.
Twitter user Matt Navarra, who has used Twitter’s ad platform in the past, was invited by the microblogging network to take part in a private beta for a new service that “automatically amplifies your tweets and profile” for 30 days.
All those who have been invited to the private beta will get the first 30 days for free and they will then have to pay $99 per month for the service. They will receive a report card every week that shows additional reach, followers, and engagements as a result of the automatic promotion.
It seems that Twitter wants to make the process of promoting tweets on the social network easy for users, both individuals, and brands. They don’t have to spend time to create ads. Twitter automatically promotes their tweets and profile for $99 per month.
It remains to be seen when Twitter will launch this service for all users.
Twitter is testing a $99 per mth ad subscription that auto-amplifies all your tweets and your profile pic.twitter.com/rIgJ3vW1hF
— Matt Navarra ⭐️ (@MattNavarra) July 28, 2017
Twitter’s New Service Automatically Promotes Tweets For $99 Per Month , original content from Ubergizmo. Read our Copyrights and terms of use.
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