Every Voting Machine at This Hacking Conference Got Totally Pwned.A noisy cheer went up from the crowd of hackers clustered around the voting machine tucked into the back corner of a casino conference roomtheyd just managed to load Rick Astleys Never Gonna Give You Up onto the Win.Vote, effectively rickrolling democracy.The hack was easy to execute.Two of the hackers working on the touchscreen voting machine, who identified only by their first names, Nick and Josh, had managed to install Windows Media Player on the machine and use it to play Astleys classic turned trolling track.The rickroll stunt was just one hack at the security conference DEF CON, which ran a three day Voting Machine Hacking Village to test the security of various machines and networks used in US elections.HTC devices always came with a locked bootloader and you need to unlock bootloader manually by the HTCDev website.Why do you need to unlock bootloader De.Download Whatsapp New Version For Htc Chacha Battery' title='Download Whatsapp New Version For Htc Chacha Battery' />By the end of the weekend, every one of the roughly 3.Even though several of the exploits ended up paying tribute to Astley, theyre not jokesthey also present a serious lesson about the security vulnerabilities in voting machines that leave them open to tampering and manipulation.And the more vulnerable our voting infrastructure is shown to be, the less confidence voters may feel.The real takeaway is that you can install any software on this, Nick told Gizmodo.Theres no control.Nick had simply connected a keyboard to an exposed USB port at the back of the Win.Vote, which was used in elections as recently as 2.The voting village is the brainchild of a whos who list of security experts DEF CON founder Jeff Moss, cryptographer Matt Blaze, computer programmer Harri Hursti whose hack of Diebold voting machines in 2.Hursti Hack, and others.Researchers have been uncovering problems with voting systems for more than a decade, but the 2.Now the entire country, and maybe the world, is paying attention.But poll workers and former campaign officials say that their primary security concerns still arent with voting machines themselves but with protecting voter registration systems and defending against basic phishing attacks like the ones used to gain entry to the Democratic National Committees network.Meet the machinesThis is the great Satan, said Joseph Lorenzo Hall, the chief technologist at the Center for Democracy Technology, gesturing dismissively at the Win.Vote. The machine contains a cellular modem chip that allows its software to be updated remotely.Unfortunately, it also means that you can log into the damn thing from across the street if you know the right credentials, Hall explained.Whats hundreds of miles between networked friends The Win.Vote was the first machine to fall, with a hacker achieving remote code execution on the machine within the first hours of the village.Win. Votes were decertified by Virginias election board in 2.American voting systems are largely cobbled together with antiquated technology.Voting machines can vary by state and county, and have to be certified by the Election Assistance Commission.But other devices, like the electronic poll books used in some jurisdictions to check in voters at their polling stations, arent subject to the certification process.Add in the voter registration databases themselveswhich were reportedly breached in 3.The machines are mostly new to the hackers at DEF CON.Theyre not very much fun, theyre like very boring ATMs, Hall joked.Its obvious that election systems arent very secure, but its important to understand why the security problems exist in the first place, and why theyre so hard to fix.The security industry encourages regular software updates to patch bugs and keep machines as impenetrable as possible.But updating the machines used in voting systems isnt as easy as installing a patch because the machines are subject to strict certification rules.Any major software update would require the state to redo its certification process.It costs over 1 million to get certified, Joshua Franklin, a security specialist with the National Institute of Standards and Technologys cybersecurity and privacy application unit, explained to attendees.Franklin said that even though the Election Assistance Commissions most recent election security standards were released in 2.The cost breaks down to about 3.Tom Stanionis, an IT manager for a county election agency in California who attended the village in his personal capacity.Most states just dont have the money.Whats hundreds of miles between networked friendsThe reality is, weve known about issues with voting machines for a long time, Stanionis told Gizmodo.Since purchasing brand new systems is out of the question, Stanionis said most states do their best to protect the systems they have, walling them off from the internet and storing them securely when theyre not being used.The rat king of decentralized state vendors and machines might actually be a good defense during a general electionit would force hackers to successfully target many disparate systems.It would be really hard in most jurisdictions to do anything to affect the voting machines, Stanionis said.Difficult doesnt mean impossible, though, and thats what DEF CONs hackers have set out to prove.If a hacker tucked away in a corner of a Las Vegas casino can alter a vote count, then surely a nation state attacker can too.The thing you have to ask about any new technology is, compared with the technology that proceeded it, does this make that threat easier or harder Does it make us better off or worse off Blaze told attendees.Does whatever the technology were using make this threat an easier threat or a tougher threat Thats the question we havent really been sharply asking for very long.Email security and beyond.Robby Mook, the former manager of Hillary Clintons presidential campaign, is at DEF CON for the first time, and you can kind of tellhe looks a bit too clean cut for a conference often filled with hoodie wearing hackers.But hes got experience being targeted by nation state hackers that few other attendees can claim.Although hackers were hard at work down the hall figuring out how to alter vote tallies, Mook said he was still mostly worried about getting campaign workers to secure their email accounts with two factor authentication and stop retaining data for longer than necessary.Its much more a matter of culture and education than it is of spending enormous resources, Mook told Gizmodo.People in the security community know a lot of things instinctually that a campaign professional has never had exposure to, ever.Public confidence in elections is what gives government legitimacy.Mook, along with former Mitt Romney campaign manager Matt Rhoades and former Assistant Secretary of Defense Eric Rosenbach, launched an initiative at Harvard University earlier this summer focused on providing security resources to campaigns and election officials.The Defending Digital Democracy project received a founding investment from Facebook, and executives from the social network as well as Google and Crowd.Strike are helping establish an information sharing organization that will give political committees and campaigns quick access to threat intelligence.If you pull aside any campaign manager and say, Do you want to get hacked theyd say no, Mook told DEF CON attendees.If you asked them, Have you done everything you can theyd say, No, but I dont really know.Campaigns, along with voter registration databases, are softer targets for hackersthe events of the last year demonstrate that.And as exciting as it is to tear a voting machine apart, the goal of securing elections might be reached faster through educating election officials about cybersecurity best practices.The voter registration databases are becoming a more obvious target, Stanionis said.Altering the voter roll to show an incorrect polling location for just a few voters could drastically slow down the voting process for many, he explained.If a voter isnt believed to be in their correct polling station, shell be asked to fill out a provisional ballot, slowing down the line for everyone.Some might get sick of waiting and leave.Thats hacking the election but doesnt look illegal from the outside, he said.These kinds of softer attacks strike at public trust in election systems.Rooting Your Android Benefits and Disadvantages.So, you are in a dilemma if you should root your new and expensive Android phone.There might be many questions popping in your mind like what is rooting exactly.Well, well take these up in our post today and try to answer them.Well start by talking about the most basic question what does it mean when one says he shouldshould not root his Android Lets see.Rooting an Android phone What Does it MeanWell, rooting an Android phone simply means to gain administrative privileges or root access if you are from a Linux background on the system.When you buy a new Android phone, you are just a guest user on the phone.You can use the phone, just as a guest would use Windows, but you will not be able to make any changes to the system files.However, after you have a root access over your phone, you could browse your Android root folder and make any changes to the system files on your phone.And thatd mean the ability to make all kinds of changes and install more powerful apps that you cant use on a non rooted phone.We will now be talking about both merits and demerits associated with rooting an Android phone.Let us start with the brighter side the benefits.Benefits of Rooting an Android Phone.Here are some of the advantages of using a rooted Android phone.Run Special Applications. Temporary License Plate In Ontario . After you have rooted your phone, you can run special applications that require root access on your phone.When compared to regular applications, root applications provide more features.As these special apps can directly deal with the Android system files, they can tweak your Android in more extensive ways.For example, you can uninstall multiple applications silently after you have root access using e.Uninstall. Run Custom ROMs.One of the main reasons I rooted my phone was because I wanted to install and use custom ROMs on it.These custom ROMs bring many teaks and performance fixes and are much more user friendly when compared to the stock ones.They are optimized in performance and battery are updated more frequently than the stock ROMs.Free Internal Storage.People who have low internal memory can transfer any application from internal memory to SD card after rooting their phone.There are some applications that provide the option by default.But if you want to force move an app by creating a symlink, you must use an app that only works on a rooted phone.So those were about the merits.Nothings perfect and there are certain caveats associated with rooting an Android device.Disadvantages of Rooting Your Android.So, lets take a look at the demerits of rooting your Android.Your Phone Might Get Bricked.Not to demotivate you here, but when I tried to root my first Android phone Samsung Galaxy S I bricked it and it was in the service center for next 1.No matter how good a rooting tutorial is, its a daunting task and if you miss out any step or flash a corrupt zip file thats what happened to me you might end up with a bricked broken phone.Now assuming that you are not a power user, you will have to go to your phone manufacturers service center and get your phone fixed.Moreover, if they come to know that the brick or semi brick has caused because you were trying to root your phone, you might as well be charged for it.You End up Voiding Phones Warranty.As soon as you root your phone, you void your phones warranty and if anything happens to your phone even when its in the warranty period, the company is going to charge you for the repairs.In some of the phones, you can un root your phone, but in most of the phones theres is no going back.Conclusion. So, youve been acquainted and warned.If you think that rooting the phone to run special applications and custom ROM is worth is, go ahead.If you think its not worth the hassle, stay put.At the end of the day, its depends on your usage and what you want your phone to do for you.Of course, proceeding with caution no matter how great an expert you think you are is always advisable.The bricking incident never stopped me from rooting my phone again.
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