In GA Federal Court, Engineering Professor Hacks Dominion Voting machine Using Only a Pen to Change Vote Totals in Front of U.S. District Judge

In a Federal Court in Atlanta, Georgia, computer science and engineering professor J. Alex Halderman was able to hack a Dominion voting tabulator in front of U.S. District Judge Amy Totenberg using only a pen to change the vote totals. 

Georgia election officials have been aware of existing vulnerabilities in the state’s voting software for more than two years but continue to insist the system is safe and won’t be updated until after 2024, according to a report that was unsealed this week as part of a controversial court case in Georgia.The report’s findings focus on weaknesses in software for certain Dominion Voting machines. Those weaknesses were previously verified by federal cybersecurity officials, who urged election officials across the country to update their systems.

 A lawyer for Georgia’s top election official, Republican Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger, recently told a federal court that officials would forgo installing Dominion’s security patches until after the 2024 presidential election. 

A long-awaited report on the cybersecurity vulnerabilities of election machines in Georgia was finally released alongside another report on Wednesday.. 

The  report — by University of Michigan professor J. Alex Halderman and Auburn University assistant professor Drew Springall, who helped him — outlined several cybersecurity flaws, the most critical of which they say could be exploited by malicious hackers to change votes and alter election outcomes. Importantly, Halderman said there’s no evidence that the vulnerabilities have actually been used by malicious hackers to change votes or steal an election.