Hackers just proved how easy it is to break into election machines and steal votes

In Germany, a hacker collective discovered major weaknesses in German voting software that could make the phrase "election hacking" even more of a reality.

According to The Daily Beast, the Chaos Computer Club found vulnerabilities in voting machines used in Germany that could shift vote tallies from one candidate to another. CCC's program proves that hackers can literally change the number of votes a candidate gets based on current voting software weaknesses.

"By infecting large-scale, we could have changed every single submitted result,” CCC spokesperson Linus Neumann told the Beast.

Though Americans don't use the "PC Wahl" software CCC hacked, "the discovery highlights the serious risk hackers can pose to voting infrastructure," the report states.

As American investigations into just how far Russia's election-hacking efforts went in 2016 continue to gain steam, the results of CCC's successful hack of German software is all the more troubling.

The report goes on to discuss the DEF CON hacking conference that took place in late July where "researchers were given free-rein to dig through and probe a variety of voting machines used in U.S. elections." One hacker was reportedly able to crack a touch-screen voting machine used in Virginia in a few hours.