An electronic voting machine was hacked during a recent podcast episode, demonstrating a major concern regarding the integrity of U.S. elections ahead of the highly-anticipated presidential election in November.
In a video from a recent episode of the “PBD Podcast,” Harri Hursti, who describes himself as “a lifelong hacker & security researcher,” demonstrated how people could potentially hack into electronic voting machines and change the outcome of an election in the United States. Hursti hacked into the voting machine by exposing a “USB vulnerability in the system.
The electronic voting machine Hursti used in his demonstration was last used in 2012. Hursti described the voting machine as the “worst voting machine used in the United States” due to its “many vulnerabilities” and explained that it was previously used in places like Virginia and Maryland. According to Hursti, by plugging a USB computer into the electronic voting machine’s USB port, a hacker could take control of the system in six or seven seconds.
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Hursti claimed that if the hacking demonstration had been an actual attack, an individual could “do anything” they wanted to with the election results. He also warned that wireless attacks were possible on electronic voting machines with wireless internet access.
“If this would have been an election, I could have gone to the database and for example change the votes,” Hursti said in the video.
Asked by PBD Podcast host Patrick Bet-David what he could change by controlling the system, Hursti said, “Anything, add new candidate who was not even on a ballot, it doesn’t matter, because if you have total control over the system, you can do anything you want.”
Sharing the video on social media, Behizy Tweets wrote, “Someone just hacked a voting machine within seconds live on PBD’s podcast. He only used a preprogrammed USB stick that gave him total access to do whatever he wanted, including flipping or creating votes out of thin air.”
Bet-David also shared a picture of Hursti with the voting machine from the podcast episode on social media, tweeting, “Yes, that’s a voting machine! Yes, @HarriHursti hacked into it LIVE on the podcast.”
While the PBD Podcast episode featured a specific type of voting machine that was last used in 2012, Hursti warns in another video on YouTube that “every voting machine can be hacked.”
