>Synack, a security platform based in San Francisco, had its hands on the WinVote machine months ahead of Defcon. It discovered a host of serious flaws with the system.
>While many people at the Voter Hacking Village zeroed in on the weak mechanical lock covering access to the machine's USB port, Synack worked on two open USB ports right on the back. No lock picking was necessary.
>The team plugged in a mouse and a keyboard -- which didn't require authentication -- and got out of the voting software to standard Windows XP just by pressing "control-alt-delete." The same thing you do to force close a program can be used to hack an election.
>"It's really just a matter of plugging your USB drive in for five seconds and the thing's completely compromised at that point," Synack co-founder Jay Kaplan said. "To the point where you can get remote access. It's very simple."
>Synack's team was able to access the voting machine from a mobile app by installing a remote desktop program on it.
>Once you're out of the voting program on the machine, it's just like any old Windows XP computer, Synack found. In one case study, the company found a poll worker in Virginia had hacked the machine so she could play Minesweeper on it.
>When you're in the machine, changing votes is as simple as updating an Office document.
>It's like an Excel file in which "you would just change the number and upload it back," said Anne-Marie Hwang, an intern at Synack, who demonstrated the vote changes.
Can you believe burgers use this crap to vote?