Futurama Robot Elected by Hack

Answering a public challenge to test the security of Washington DC’s electronic election system, a team from the University of Michigan successfully got the foul-mouthed, drunken Futurama robot Bender elected to head of a school board reports The Register:

According to the log files the team found, plenty of people were also busy trying to get into the system. They spotted attempts to get in from the Persian University, as well as India and China. Using their inside access, they blocked these attacks. Finally, they inserted the word “owned” onto the final signoff screen of the voting page, and set up the University of Michigan football fight song to play after 15 seconds.

It took two days before the authorities discovered they’d been pwned, and they were only alerted to that fact when another tester told them the system was secure, but that they should lose the music on the sign-off screen, as it was rather annoying.

[Thanks to David Klaus for the story.]

One thought on “Futurama Robot Elected by Hack

  1. Now that we know the system works, we have the obvious candidate for the Republican Party’s presidential candidate. President Bender would also break down yet another stereotype, that an artifical intelligence can’t occupy the Oval Office. Hell… any sort of “intelligence” would be a welcome change.

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