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Comments: 157 +- Your Rights Online: Brazilian Breaks Secrecy of Brazil's E-Voting Machines With Van Eck Phreaking on Saturday November 21, @10:11PM
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After the report last week that Brazil's e-voting machines had withstood the scrutiny of a team of invited hackers, reader ateu writes with news that a hacker has shown that the Linux-based voting machines aren't perfectly safe; he was able to eavesdrop on them (translated from Portuguese) by means of Van Eck phreaking.
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Honestly (Score:2, Insightful)
Re: (Score:2)
Copper mesh or metal plating on the case tied to the ground. Chokes on all connections. If touchscreen, you could be screwed since it might not like a copper mesh but if it isn't covered it becomes an emitter.
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:3, Informative)
Good pictures. It looks like a newer version could be made to limit the emissions quite nicely. It might also be possible to retrofit the existing machines with shielding including a false front to extend the keypad buttons (but not the switches) through the shield.
At the busiest polling places it probably wouldn't be as much problem as many people would be using many identical machines at once. It would be hard to know who did what.
A tone generator connected to a transmitter might be able to simply jam the
Re:Honestly (Score:5, Funny)
It's simple. just throw out the person with the radar dish, oscilliscope, and notepad.
Parent
Re:Honestly (Score:5, Informative)
Exactly so.
The equipment to carry out this snooping is easily spotted, and more easily foiled.
With more than one voting station in the room, said eaves dropper could never distinguish one vote from the other, and could certainly not CHANGE the results.
You would be better able to guess how persons voted by the color of their tie. http://www.tie-necktie-video.com/tie-color.html [tie-necktie-video.com]
Parent
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Honestly (Score:5, Interesting)
Several ideas. Of course, use LCDs, as the CRT circuitry is the bad one. Shield the data connections so they don't radiate too much. Make the connections that transmit unencrypted data short. Use low-contrast fonts, so the sharp edges do not cause large voltage (and therefore EMI) spikes. Randomise the low bits of data shown on the screen, so you create obfuscating noise.
Maybe you have to go as far as have a white noise transmitter to mask what you cannot elimiate. Plenty of room to move. Good on them for having such a contest - it flushed out all the 'Ooh, I didn't think of that' problems.
Parent
Re:Honestly (Score:4, Informative)
Of course, use LCDs, as the CRT circuitry is the bad one.
Wikipedia would disagree [wikipedia.org] with an annoying PDF [cam.ac.uk].
Parent
Re:Honestly (Score:5, Insightful)
Low-contrast fonts are probably right out, since you don't want to disenfranchise old folks and others with vision problems.
Parent
Re:Honestly (Score:5, Insightful)
Easy. Take the machine, hollow them out, put a board in and use their shell as a guard from prying eyes for pen&paper voting. The manufacturers of the machines get the money and we get secure and anonymous voting.
Parent
Re: (Score:3, Informative)
Not much really. While it is possible to effectively protect a device from such snooping it is very expensive due to the testing and handling requirements. I don't see it on the link but I think there is a commercial Tempest standard.
http://www.eskimo.com/~joelm/tempestintro.html [eskimo.com]
The page has good info and you can try the anti-Tempest fonts for a grin. It's based on the paper also referenced on that page.
Fonts where? (Score:2)
The anti-TEMPEST fonts seem to have been withdrawn:
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The reasonable defense is a simple enclosure with a door - line the enclosure and door with tempest. Each voter closes the door while they vote.
Encrypted link back to head office, jobs done.
Re:Honestly (Score:4, Insightful)
Exactly. It's pretty safe. This shows that a random citizen is unlikely to give an election to Mickey Mouse on a whim.
Instead it would take someone with significant knowledge and even serious funding to sway an election. Probably not just a someone, but even an organization.
So the only way this could ever effect elections would be if there were an organization or group of conspiring individuals with significant monetary resources - AND for that group of people to feel that swaying an election would be in their interest - AND for that group of people to then be so immoral as to decide to do so.
Clearly such a confluence of conditions is so wildly improbable that we can effectively rule out its possibility.
Parent
Cryptonomicon (Score:3, Interesting)
What options do you have to protect your self from Van eck phreaking? Lead casing? Foil voting boxes?
Honest replies welcome.
Put rubbish on the screen and send all your actual output through the caps lock LED with xled.
Not very useful outside in the real world, I know.
Re: (Score:2)
LCD screens are also sensitive... so I'd say maybe... Monochrome 640x480 LED Matrix and custom video chips.... or "Split-Flap type display" as seen here http://www.salient.com.au/products-splitflap.htm [salient.com.au] ... maybe some sort of adapted nixie tubes as seen here : http://www.vintagecalculators.com/html/calculator_displays.html#ColdCathode [vintagecalculators.com]
Re: (Score:2)
Split-flap displays make a little click when they change characters. Given some of the known words sequences that will be displayed, variations in the sound of each click, and variations in the timing due to the addressing of the characters, I'm sure complete displays could be reconstructed.
Re: (Score:2)
The NSA Tempest guidelines are probably sufficient.
Of course, the requirements are potentially made weaker by what you're eavesdropping. Tempest is written assuming that eavesdropping is a problem, but that's not true with voting -- it's only a problem if you are then able to associate votes with individuals.
Re: (Score:2)
Randomize the image for each voting.
This will make it a lot harder to decide the selection for each individual voter since the image will be different for each voter.
So - yes you may be able to recognize that a voted did make a selection but you won't know what the selection really was unless you have some very expensive equipment.
And as a voter I wouldn't be too worried about that kind of eavesdropping. Who besides the authorities would really be interested in the vote of an individual person bad enough to
Whew, that was a close one... (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:Whew, that was a close one... (Score:5, Insightful)
Basically.. all of the reasons you want voting to be done anonymously apply here.
If you can couple the emissions at the location of the machine with the emissions from a particular user - say, their mobile phone's signature - then you can go back to forcing people to vote for X and make sure that they do, roughing them up as an example to the others you told to vote for X if you detected a vote for Y instead, without a need to plant something on them or leaving any trace.
In theory, anyway.
Parent
No technology will prevent that (Score:4, Insightful)
Parent
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
What's the most someone could do with this exploit?
Uhh.. find out who someone voted for? All you need is two people, one in the polling place and someone else with one of these devices. If I really have to try to convince you of the value of secret votes, I give up.
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Use it as feedback to calibrate a separate vote rigging operation. If your guy wins by 20% an investigation may be triggered. If he wins by 2% you may be in the clear. So how do you gauge the real vote, while there is still time to cast face votes?
Broken "secrecy" (Score:2)
Perhaps you read too quickly. "Secrecy," not "security." There are plenty of responses explaining the importance of secret ballots.
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
What's the most someone could do with this exploit?
A little context is needed in order to further explore this point. Brazil is a huge country, of continental dimensions. Voting is a mandatory civic duty (except for older citizens). In the remote and impoverished areas, intimidating voters or buying votes was a common, widespread practice, constituting what is termed an "electoral corral", that helped maintain veritable "political dynasties" in these areas for decades. One of the selling points of electroni
Physical Security (Score:4, Interesting)
Re:Physical Security (Score:4, Insightful)
If an attacker were able to access the voting location enough to install an unnoticeable antenna, I'd be more concerned with small cameras. Even a large antenna in a nearby building would require somebody watching to see who was using which voting machine, in order to pose any real threat.
Parent
I'm still not even at this step yet (Score:2, Redundant)
I'm not yet at "how do we get e-voting secure?". I'm still puzzled by the question "why the f. do we need it?"
Re: (Score:2)
In some parts of the world they do learn about democracy after right-wing military dictatorships.
In others they just trust election solutions provided by an ATM maker.
When their boss is exposed on wikipedia, they go back in using the company IP's and try to "Soviet" out the references to the CEO's fund-raising.
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Easier for the disabled. Easier to support multiple languages. Easier to have duplicate copies so you can't be surprised and "find" a box of ballots in a warehouse later. Less ambiguity in regards to intention (see Minnesota's Senate race.)
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
Among the others, enabling a non-FPTP system.
If anyone isn't aware of how FPTP has hosed democracy, they should start here [wikipedia.org].
The primary concern I recognize is that FPTP collapses your system into a two-party system and makes third parties non-viable. Just try voting for Nader or Kucinich.
E-paper (Score:4, Interesting)
Besides all the shielding options, perhaps this is a good use for E-paper displays? The persistent nature of the display would minimize the constant refreshing. The slow screen response would be unlikely to be an issue with a ballot.
This happened with the Dutch in 2006 (Score:5, Informative)
Re:This happened with the Dutch in 2006 (Score:5, Interesting)
That's only part of the story.
The voting machines were vulnerable to more than just eavesdropping, although eavesdropping was the official story from the government and also what most of the press was about.
However, the voting machines have since been banned. The latest elections were held with paper and pencil. It's good that way.
Now if people would only understand this ...
Parent
It could be big... (Score:2, Interesting)
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
You just overlooked one small issue: voter turnout is already a problem in most democracies, as it is somewhat boring to vote for things your are not that interested in. If there were more elections, you would have to vote each week. Nobody is going to keep doing that, as most people do not see it as their job, and it is a process with very little positive feedback. So only the zealots and paid shills will remain, thus making your country run by big money and zealots with a nutty agenda. Not unlike the US i
As a person in the infosec field (Score:5, Insightful)
Dumb question... (Score:2, Insightful)
Why does the electronic voting machine have to be a touch screen? Why not a list of the options with buttons with an LED in them that light up when you press the button? The list could be on a separate display next to the buttons but nothing changes therefore the 'van eck phreaker' would only get the data on the screen, not the option picked... but I have no knowledge of this sort of stuff.
Maybe some places do that, but where I live we do vote by mail.
Re: (Score:2)
Because people are stupid.
~Sticky
Re: (Score:3, Informative)
Re: (Score:3, Informative)
because here in brasil we don't have voting districts, so in state and federal elections, a candidate from santos (a sea-side city in sao paulo state, some 80 km east of the state capital) can receive votes from people in ribeirão preto (a city 400 km west of the capital). this makes the candidate lists for federal and state deputies something in the thousands.
our voting system uses numbers. each party is assigned a number (ex. PP=11, PDT=12, PT=13, etc.) and every candidate have a number prefixed with
It's not a practical approach (Score:3, Interesting)
While in principle it is a good method for snooping a single monitor, it would take a ton of disentangling signals to read every monitor consistently at a polling place from any distance. It is not a practical way to screw with an election, considering that any party willing to snoop this aggressively is probably willing to do a lot more than just snoop.
Frankly, it shows just how effective Brazil's security measures are that hackers have to go this deep into the playbook to get even one sort of result.
Re:Van Eck Phreacking will always exist (Score:5, Insightful)
Don't be silly.
Secret ballot is one of the cornerstones of democracy.
In a secret ballot, you don't get bribed to vote for a particular person because you can
always say you voted for him while voting for him.
Likewise, about getting pressured about voting for someone.
Parent
Re: (Score:2)
Meant to write - "while voting for someone else".
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
In many of those countries, the secrecy of your vote hardly matters anyway. After all, they've already done most of the voting for you.
You might even get your hands chopped off for just daring to show up to vote.
In places where you can have voter intimidation without the police stepping in (or the police being the culprits), secrecy of your vote is not much of a concern.
And in some countries the voting system is so fast a