Toward the end of Games Com this past week in Germany, there was a cosplay contest for Final Fantasy XIV A Realm Reborn. Naoki Yoshida, the games director, helped. To stop the player from just going nuts and building everything at once, KC puts a cap on your progress by using your settlements population as an energy meter. Subscribe and SAVE, give a gift subscription or get help with an existing subscription by clicking the links below each cover image. 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. 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. The Electric Car Charging Infrastructure Is Nowhere Near Ready But I Have An Idea. Tesla has 5. 00,0. Model 3, Chevy has a 3. Europe have set timelines to eliminate the sale of new combustion cars, and electric vehicles may end up being cheaper to build than dead dinosaur sauce burning cars. It sure seems like electric cars are here to stay, but the truth is theyre still a pain in the ass to use when it comes to charging. I think I may have a workable stopgap solution. The latest generation of electric cars have defined a 2. Being able to drive 2. The range for many electric cars is finally where it needs to be, but, like all good things, that range does eventually run out, and thats where the problems begin. The charging infrastructure, while at least in some way extant, can in no way compete with the convenience of the robust gasoline refueling infrastructure drivers are used to, and thats going to be a problem for widespread adoption. For most owners, charging is done every night, at home, and the cars, like the plot of a shitty sitcom, always end up back where they started once the days adventures are over. This works fine for many people, but if youre one of the millions of Americans who live in apartments without EV charging facilities, or if you just want to take a long road trip, the limitations of the current charging infrastructure become very, very clear. As of June of this year, there were around 1. EV charging stations with about 4. United States. That seems like a decent number, but most of those seem to be slow Level 2 charging stations, with the fast DC charging stations, like the Tesla Superchargers, only numbering 2,1. Its these fast DC stations that are most suitable to long distance travel, since they dont take 6 or 8 hours to get your car back to a usuable charge. Now, for comparison, theres about 1. United States, with each station having. These numbers vary wildly, from tiny stations with 2 or 4 to huge truck stops with 3. Well guess conservatively that an average station has 1. U. S. Thats a hell of a lot more. Gas stations are, as we all know, everywhere. So, heres where we are electric cars are finally becoming affordable and practical enough to make sense to use, but if you want to do any significant traveling in one, its still a colossal ass pain. But I think I have a decent stop gap solution. The key here is that to make a viable electric car charging infrastructure, well need to piggyback on an existing infrastructure, and the most logical one to use is the gas station network. Trying to wire all gas stations or even one given chain of gas stations with the hardware needed for fast DC chargers would be expensive and slow. That type of network will need to come one day, but in the short term we need something fast and good enough. Thats where Trunk Batteries come in. Heres what needs to happen one or more of the major gas station franchises needs to partner with a hypothetical company that produces modular, rechargeable, swappable battery packs that can be placed into an electric cars trunk, connect to the cars charging system, and give the car a decent enough amount of range to be useful. Itd work like this youre taking your Model 3 or Bolt or Model S or whatever on a road trip, and you see youre running out of battery power. Instead of hunting around to desperately find a charging station in range, you take the next exit, stop at a normal gas station, and back or drive up, if you have a front trunk up to the Trunk Battery kiosk. Once there, you open your trunk and a forklift like device places the 2. The battery pack has a place to hold your hood or hatch nearly closed while allowing a cable room to snake out and plug into your cars charging port. You plug it in, check your range and see you have around 1. When you exhaust the Trunk Battery, you stop at the next Trunk Battery licensed gas station, and either drop off the battery or have it swapped for a fresh one. Easy Thanks to the Tesla Model 3s new 2. EV trunks with a range of around 9. Here, Ill walk you through the math each 2. Wh, and weighs 6. If we get 1. 50. 0 of these cells together, that makes a nearly 3. Wh battery pack with 2. Most sources say that you can expect an average of about 3 miles per k. Wh, so our 3. 2 k. Wh battery pack should provide about 9. If we package these 1. If we factor in wiring and cooling devices and housing, we can probably end up with a 2. Tesla Model S, and should fit in the hatch or trunk area of pretty much any major EV available for sale. Any gas station franchise that decides to deal in Trunk Batteries would need a bit of equipment a self contained kiosk that stores and recharges battery packs, along with a liftdrop system for getting them easily into and out of car trunks. These would take a bit of design and engineering work, but its by no means all that complicated. Additionally, since the Trunk Battery system is, essentially, a third party battery swapping system, the viability and benefits of a battery swapping solution would be made very clear. If Trunk Batteries became popular, carmakers may start including auxiliary charging ports right inside their trunks, or, even better, manufacturers would eventually agree on a standardized battery format and connector system to make all of the cars batteries easily swappable by design, and without eating up precious luggage space. A solution like Trunk Batteries isnt a long term solution its a stopgap that provides a way to leverage the existing robust gas station infrastructure in a quick and dirty way. Using a Trunk Battery means giving up a good chunk of your storage volume, and, at only about 1. Even so, it would at least make an impromptu road trip possible, and allow for EVs to be used generally the same way combustion cars get used, without the route limitations and obsessive planning thats usually required for any EV road trip. Right now, though, I think a solution like Trunk Batteries is the most likely way the coming boom of electric car ownership will be served while a real charging infrastructure is slowly built. Its a solution that should only be needed for about a decade or so, but, without it, EVs may not even be able to sell in the numbers needed to have a full charging network make sense. As always, investors are welcome to contact me here. Is Sparky too obvious a name for the talking battery pack mascot
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