Filed under: Misc. Gadgets

For years, Diebold has embarrassed itself by claiming that obvious faults were actually not faults at all, and during the past decade or so, it mastered the act of pointing the finger. Now that it has ironically renamed itself Premier Election Solutions, it’s finally coming clean. According to spokesman Chris Riggall, a “critical programming error that can cause votes to be dropped while being electronically transferred from memory cards to a central tallying point” has been part of the software for ten years. The flaw is on both optical scan and touchscreen machines, and while Mr. Riggall asserts that the logic error probably didn’t ruin any elections (speaking of logic error…), the outfit’s president has confessed to being “distressed” about the ordeal. More like “distressed” about the increasingly bleak future of his company.

[Via Techdirt]

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Filed under: Misc. Gadgets

Just as the world’s landfills could soon see an influx of unwanted televisions, many American warehouses are packed with e-voting machines that once held promise for a better way to vote. Instead, they turned into a multi-year fiasco, with hackers figuring out how to do everything save for their income taxes on ‘em and states reverting back to less vulnerable methods. Now, many states are scrambling for ways to recoup costs, even for outlets that will take them in for recycling. Oddly, Ohio cannot ditch the systems it purchased until a couple of related lawsuits get dealt with. The result? Buckeyes will probably still be using e-voting machines come November.

[Via Slashdot, image courtesy of BradBlog]

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Filed under: Misc. Gadgets

It’s downright frightening that we’ve become numb to this news, but here again we’re faced with another report of e-passports being hacked within minutes. The University of Amsterdam’s Jeroen van Beek was reportedly able to clone and manipulate a pair of British passports in about the time it takes you to sip down your first cup of joe in the morning, and worse still, they were accepted as genuine by the software “recommended for use at international airports.” The tests point out a number of vulnerabilities, including the fact that the microchips could be susceptible to having falsified biometrics inserted for use. As expected, talking heads at the Home Office still insist that any chip manipulation would be immediately recognized by the electronic readers, so we’ll leave it up to you to decide who’s telling the truth here.

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Filed under: Storage

This one goes out to the same folks who buy bullet hole stickers for their whip, hang stuffed arms from their tailgates and have those half-baseballs suctioned to their windshield — all in the name of garnering attention. HACKED! is a user creation-gone-commercial that features a severed USB cable with 2GB of internal capacity. For those not in the know, it looks as if you had a nasty encounter with a vicious canine (or a hacksaw), but in reality, it’s simply a 2GB flash drive in disguise. This has success written all over it.

[Via MAKE]

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Filed under: Home Entertainment

Hope you’re not too sleepy, you hacker you, ’cause we’ve got a juicy one coming your way. No sooner did we find that the Netflix Player would be streaming content from other players in the industry later this year than Roku opens up the source code vault. You heard right — the GPL code has now been posted for the world to see, meaning that there’s just one link standing between you and umpteen delicious tarballs. Mmm, tarballs.

[Via Hack-A-Day]

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Filed under: Home Entertainment

Hope you’re not too sleepy, you hacker you, ’cause we’ve got a juicy one coming your way. No sooner did we find that the Netflix Player would be streaming content from other players in the industry later this year than Roku opens up the source code vault. You heard right — the GPL code has now been posted for the world to see, meaning that there’s just one link standing between you and umpteen delicious tarballs. Mmm, tarballs.

[Via Hack-A-Day]

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Filed under: Gaming

We’ll be straight with you — it’s a bit of a mystery what exactly is going on here, but famed Wii hacker Waninkoko has apparently figured out a way to take Virtual Console titles and play them on another Wii. The good news? There’s a video — which many aren’t hesitating to blast with “fake!” — of the trick posted after the jump. The bad? There’s no how-to in sight.

[Thanks, Craig]

Continue reading Wii’s Virtual Console hacked on video

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Filed under: Misc. Gadgets

Shortly after hearing a sad tale of a 7-year old cancer patient having his medication and PSP stolen whilst en route to treatment comes yet another story of the world’s meanest preying on the helpless. This go ’round, a group of griefers (assuming to be members of Anonymous) managed to invade a support forum established by the nonprofit Epilepsy Foundation and use JavaScript code and messages littered with flashing animations to effectively assault dozens of visitors who suffer from the disorder. The Foundation managed to catch wind of the problem within 12 hours of the attack, and while the boards were closed down temporarily to purge it of offending messages, many readers (such as RyAnne Fultz, pictured) experienced headaches and seizures before rescue arrived. Let’s just say we sincerely hope the culprits get what’s comin’ to ‘em.

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Filed under: Misc. Gadgets

We’re going out on a limb here and assuming that precisely no one is surprised, but yes, another e-voting machine has proven totally incapable of resisting even the most unsophisticated of hacks. Not long after California Secretary of State Debra Bowen okayed the use of systems that failed prior security audits provided they make a few last minute attempts to appear invulnerable, a security penetration team revealed that an ES&S test system was no better than the rest. Reportedly, Red Team researchers were able to circumvent physical blocks with little effort, and they were even able to access internal files by making a quick and dirty change to the BIOS and booting it up with an external memory device. Needless to say, this deceased horse has been bludgeoned quite enough, but if you’re interested in seeing a dozen pages of epic failure, the read link has got you covered. [Warning: PDF read link]

[Via ArsTechnica, image courtesy of USA Today]

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Office Depot Featured Gadget: Xbox 360 Platinum System Packs the power to bring games to life!

Filed under: HDTV, Home Entertainment

We haven’t broken down the minutes and seconds or anything, but we’re fairly certain that July 10th wasn’t exactly ten years ago. Nevertheless, the so-called “impenetrable” BD+ DRM scheme has reportedly already been subverted, and it’s no shock to hear that the folks behind SlySoft had a hand in it. Regrettably, there’s not a lot of details beyond that just yet, but according to the outfit’s CEO, the software is ready to rock and should be released before the end of 2007. Chalk (yet another) one up to the hackers.

[Via HighDefDigest, thanks to everyone who sent this in]

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Office Depot Featured Gadget: Xbox 360 Platinum System Packs the power to bring games to life!