Indian Election Officials Challenges Critics To Hack Electronic Voting Machine (thehindu.com) 52
Slashdot reader erodep writes: Following the recent elections in India, there have been multiple allegations of electoral fraud by hacking of Electronic Voting Machines... Two weeks ago, a party even "demonstrated" that these machines can be hacked. The Election Commission of India has rubbished these claims and they have thrown an open challenge, starting June 3rd to hack these EVMs using WiFi, Bluetooth or any internet device. This is a plea to the hackers of Slashdot to help secure the future of the largest democracy on the planet.
Each party can nominate three experts -- though India's Aam Aaadmi Party is already complaining that there's too many terms and conditions. And party leader Sanjay Singh has said he also wants paper ballots for all future elections, arguing "All foreign countries like America, Japan, Germany and Britain have gone back to ballot paper."
Each party can nominate three experts -- though India's Aam Aaadmi Party is already complaining that there's too many terms and conditions. And party leader Sanjay Singh has said he also wants paper ballots for all future elections, arguing "All foreign countries like America, Japan, Germany and Britain have gone back to ballot paper."
Going back? (Score:2)
Britain never switched away from paper ballots, so it hasn't gone back.
How to embarrass your country in one easy step (Score:2)
So he issued an open challenge to hack the election two weeks after it was demonstrated hacks were easily possible?
*gets the popcorn* This should be entertaining. I wonder how many meters deep the smoking craters of their servers will be.
Re: How to embarrass your country in one easy step (Score:1)
The political party (AAP) used a prototype, not the original Electronic Voting Machine, to show how it can be done. Now the Election Commission has organised hackathon for the original machine. Such hackathon have been previously also organised without any success.
Re:How to embarrass your country in one easy step (Score:4, Informative)
The challenge is meaningless. It is far easier to install a backdoor than to detect one. Heartbleed went undetected for years, and that was an unintentional bug with full source available to anyone. A maliciously designed backdoor, specifically designed to be hidden, would be far harder to detect. It is not clear from TFA if the hackers will have access to the source code, but since it says they will not be allowed to "tweak" the EVMs, it sounds like they will not, and they certainly will not be allowed to recompile to install instrumentation to capture intermediate state. They are also only give 4-5 days, which is nowhere near enough time to understand a complex system.
This "hacker challenge" is designed to ensure failure. Why? They only reason I can think of is that they are hiding something.
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It would easier to switch the memory module when it is transported or when it is tabulated. It is as simple as it can be for a machine without paper trail.
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So you want to do the opposite of other countries just to be different or avoid being a follower? Even when it doesn't make sense?
Re: What? I guess the colonial mentality still thr (Score:2)
What a stupid strawman argument. As if looking to others' experiences somehow implies that anyone is suggesting copying because they're former colonial powers.
There are, and rightly so, huge concerns with any election that doesn't have verifiable paper ballots or receipts. That's reality the world over and has zilch to do with colonialism. It affects Italy as it does India and the American countries as it does those in Africa.
Bruce Schneier isn't a colonialism (at least not that I'm aware of), rather he's o
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So, according to him, Indians should simply follow the west like a trailer?
If you have a choice of X and Y, and you notice that almost everyone else, including people that that did plenty of due diligence, chose X over Y, then that is pretty solid evidence that X is a better choice. If some people that chose Y, later admitted it was a mistake and went back to X, then that is even more evidence for X. If, despite all that, you want to choose Y, then you should be able to explain why everyone else is wrong.
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X has death panels!
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If you have a choice of X and Y, and you notice that almost everyone else, including people that that did plenty of due diligence, chose X over Y, then that is pretty solid evidence that X is a better choice. If some people that chose Y, later admitted it was a mistake and went back to X, then that is even more evidence for X.
You should talk to the PM of Australia - still forcing the build of a copper based communications network (primarily fibre to the node, then copper to the premise) when every other country / company is abandoning copper for straight through fibre for fixed line.
If, despite all that, you want to choose Y, then you should be able to explain why everyone else is wrong.
Smart politicians ensure their words contain enough ambiguity to weasel out of poor decisions. The first excuse is infallibly "blame the previous guy".
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Yum (Score:2)
Hope they enjoy the taste of crow.
Receipt (Score:1)
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Receipts are problematic. If you can prove to officials that you voted one way, you've also broken the concept of a secret ballot, which opens the door for vote manipulation (bribery, threats, etc).
I know of one local election that was decided by my mother's vote. She regularly lied to my father about how she voted.
Min
Electronic count + paper trail (Score:1)
The "receipt" is left at the voting location, placed inside a locked box that cannot be opened there.
The "receipt" needs to have enough text on it for an average person/voter to review and see their actual votes.
In this way, 100% separate counts is possible to validate the electronic counts which can be manipulated. If a human cannot take all the paper and come up with the exact same numbers for each candidate, then you don't have enough traceability.
PERIOD.
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Do your duty, Slashdot (Score:2)
Get CowboyNeal elected as India's PM!
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Trump making curry? With me it's the other way round.
Only one way (Score:4, Interesting)
You can have an electronic ballot machine, and it will store and tabulate the votes.
The key part is that it also prints the ballot in large clear print showing what you picked. This paper ballot is the "source of truth". So the election will use the electronic ballots for a quick result. Any interested party can participate in scrutinizing the paper ballots and in the case of a discrepancy, the paper ballots will be used.
As for online voting, HELL NO.
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Perhaps, but it's more efficient to use the paper receipt in the voting booth and skip the voting machine for that stage, instead having a single or small number of optical counting machines per polling location. That way the cost of expanding the number of booths is inexpensive - you just need some walls of any opaque material, a writing surface, and a marker.
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Well, there are two ways.
First, don't punch ballots. You get hanging/pregnant/etc chads because you're punching a hole and the punching tool can fail.
Use a simple pen and paper. Or in Canada, we actually use pencil. You make a mark on the ballot and as long as it is distinct that one can infer your intent, it will be counted pro
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You make a mark on the ballot and as long as it is distinct that one can infer your intent,
You don't see potential problems with that?
They emphasize to make a clear mark to show intent
They emphasize it because people mess it up.
Hiding behind definitions (Score:4, Insightful)
Maybe the machines can't be "hacked", as we commonly define the word. But somewhere, one or more people have the keys to the kingdom: the passwords, code, access, and whatever else is necessary to make the machines do whatever they're told to do, then remove all proof they were compromised.
So all these "hack it, if you can" dares mean nothing. "Hacked" does not mean "compromised", though people with a real interest in stealing an election would like us all to forget that distinction.
Unless the machine spits out a paper ballot on the spot, and the voter can immediately rectify a wrongly-recorded vote (with proof), anything is possible. Only complete idiots would trust a vote-by-machine election without some unimpeachable method for verifying the results.
The indian EVM is very simple (Score:3)
Voting data is extracted by taking a memory module out of the machine and plugging it into a tabulator or something. The memory chip is physically transported to the tabulator under seal. Police, election officials and agents accompany the chip. This was what the documentary showed way back when it was introduced.
This machine was designed by an engineer for BEL (Bharat Electronics Limited) who is very famous for his writings. He goes by the pen name Sujatha [wikipedia.org] and has written wonderful science fiction, mystery novels, humorous articles and some formal literature and formal poetry.
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This machine was designed by an engineer for BEL (Bharat Electronics Limited) who is very famous for his writings. He goes by the pen name Sujatha [wikipedia.org] and has written wonderful science fiction, mystery novels, humorous articles and some formal literature and formal poetry.
Science fiction such as, "The intelligent, autonomous voting machines".
Mystery novels such as, "Mr. Prime Minister gets 115% of the votes".
Humorous articles such as "Security and privacy in e-voting systems".
Formal literature such as "An essay on popular but stupid ideas".
Formal poetry such as "A B C, I hack thee!"
An unhackable IoT device? (Score:2)