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University of Michigan student hacks into Washington D.C. online voting system
Posted: Oct 5, 2010 at 12:34 PM [Oct 5, 2010]
A University of Michigan student apparently hacked into Washington D.C.'s new online voting system during a weeklong trial period in which the system was being tested, the Washington Post and Wired.com are reporting.
The D.C. Board of Elections and Ethics had asked outsiders to attempt to infiltrate the system. So a U-M professor promptly "unleashed his students" on the voting system, which was designed to allow military and overseas voters to cast ballots digitally, the Post reported.
Wired and the Post reported that after users cast votes through the system, the U-M fight song "The Victors" started playing -- the kind of calling card that is typical of software hackers.
In response, D.C. is reportedly scaling back its system until the security risk can be mitigated.
It was not immediately clear which professor and student were responsible for exploiting the system's security flaw. U-M is considered a global source of information technology security expertise.
Contact AnnArbor.com's Nathan Bomey at (734) 623-2587 or nathanbomey@annarbor.com. You can also follow him on Twitter or subscribe to AnnArbor.com's newsletters.
