Hackers Invited To Crack Internet Voting

InternetVoting writes "The Philippine government and the International Foundation for Electoral System will be soliciting hackers to test the security of of their Internet voting system that will be tested in an upcoming pilot program." From the article,"Local and foreign computer hackers will be tapped to try and break into an Internet-based voting system that will be pilot tested by the country's Commission on Elections (Comelec) starting July 10."

So...

they got a formal invitation this time?

I'm sure all the REAL hackers will RSVP.

Re:So...

This is going to piss off that teenager in Helsinki that's been running their elections.

Re:So...failure to disclose vulnerability?

Because they're living there ?
Democracy is valued in some countries you know...

What if

1. Find bug
2. Don't report it
3. ????
4. Profit!

Re:What if

I think they're trusting that more than one person will notice it. With OSS, we know that it's possible someone will find a security bug and not report it because that would benefit them. We also figure that there's a high enough probability of someone else noticing too that the first person's secrecy will be nullified anyway. With the people who pay for each issue you find, the hacker has a better shot at cash through trying to report it first than through hoping nobody else does.

Think they have not thought about that?

Almost certainly, they are recording ALL the packets that travel across the line as well as checking the state of the system. And if not, then they deserve what will happen. And if it is on a OSS platform, then they will be able to modify the kernel so that it gives more info during the cracking attempt.

Re:What if

Two words: honeypot system.

The way I would do something like this is to put the voting system inside a fully monitored and logged virtual machine. Then I would open it up to hackers, knowing that all changes to the system state will be logged and can be scanned for malicious actions.

What a dumb idea

What they want is to be able to say:"We got the best hackers on the job and nobody could hack it".

Of course any hacker with intentions of being a naughty boy is not going to show up and (a) make himself known or (b) reveal the holes.

Re:What a dumb idea

Of course any hacker with intentions of being a naughty boy is not going to show up and (a) make himself known or (b) reveal the holes.

But freelance security professionals and security companies looking to make a name for themselves will.

It actually surprised me

But someone I did some consulting for years ago had a PC security product that they claimed was unhackable. It was some disk arrangement where the OS could write to the disk, and those sectors would be saved in a scratch table so that when you rebooted the machine it reverted to its original state.

They took it to one of the big conventions and had a briefcase with $10k in it for the first person that could make a permanant change to the disk without opening the case. Guys showed up with their own latex gloves so they wouldn't leave prints and one managed to come up with the proprietory vendor unique command set for the particular drive model that was in the system.

I don't think that was really the sort of adversary that they expected would show.

Very Nice

This sound like a good idea in theory, but slightly fatal for the goverment. What happens when the "hax0rs!!!" don't play nice and report bugs?

Update

Posted by samzenpus on Wednesday April 18, @10:43PM

"The Philippine government and the International Foundation for Electoral System will be soliciting hackers to test the security of of their Internet voting system that will be tested in an upcoming pilot program."

UPDATE:
Posted by samzenpus on Wednesday April 18, @10:53PM
Internet voting has now been cracked.

Phillipine Election 2008 Headlines:

Ferdinand Marcos elected for another term as President with 3,000,000,000 votes. Runner up, D4v1d 3. P3t3rs0n had only 2,000,000,000 votes. Second runner up, Nikolay Sokratov from St. Petersberg had 1,5000,000,000 votes and the remaining 10,000,000,000 votes were split among 1,000,000,000 minor party candidates.

Is this genuine, a honeypot or both?

Although this seems like a good idea to check for security holes, one has to wonder if there were a more devious plan behind it or as an added bonus. Couldn't this conceivably be a way to trap people trying to break in under some sort of international law?

the philippines is famous

for handing out wads of cash to the poor to get them to vote a certain way come elections

200 peso notes famously become scarce before elections

no need to hack the system to alter the vote, just keep buying the votes

the philippines is a beautiful land, with beautiful people... and a corrupt political establishment, it's a sad commentary on corruption the philippines, the vote buying

Media Circus

I can assure you that when this story hits the mainstream media they are going to try and turn this into something it's not. I certainly hope the daytime talking heads will manage to find a decent "expert" for the show who can explain what a good thing this really is.

If you get in...

...make sure to add n+1 votes for CowboyNeal!

I live in the Philippines...

Seriously, nothing to see here, move along...

On a related topic = I can't believe our Comelec is advertising this thing, a few months ago they don't even have a feasible electronic voting solution. I remember that they got a "Diebold" like deal for use in the last national elections but we know that the expensive machines had been now rotting in warehouses (and never had seen the light of the day, that makes Diebold more succesful). There are even local programmers/firms who are willing to "donate" their services just to make the election electronic but I guess that did not work out.

And I still don't have that promised "Electronic Voter's ID" when I registered at 18 (I'm in my 20's now). Now, how could they validate if I am the one who had casted my vote.. Hmmm...

As I said, nothing to see here.. move along.. I'm going to make some coffee...

Regards,

political posturing, external hackers not problem.

the problem is the internal hackers, like the diebold tech who has testified before congress that he was told by the VP to override the machine's security and install "unauthorized patches" without alerting the polling officials.

i dont know many people outside the phillipines who get up every morning saying "i really have a stake in rigging the phillipine election this year".

A cunning plan

"Ok, boys you know what to do. Explore the weaknesses look around and give a thumbs up. Come election time we go for gold"

Theater

This is black box testing with dubious motivation for the attackers.

The right way to do this is to publish everything and pay people like Adi Shamir and Ross Anderson for blocks (big blocks) of consulting time. Even that's futile without the will and the budget to fix problems -=>WHEN<=- the security people find them.

What they're doing is a good way to get headlines and to impress the impressionable. It's not a good way to make sure a system is secure.

Huh?

FTA:

"When Scytl presented the system, everybody was impressed on the security features. It is covered by international patent and it has been declared secured by no less than Switzerland and everyone in the global community should respect that decision," Tuason told reporters in a conference Tuesday.

Switzerland is now the global arbiter of the well defined "secured" and the global community should accept that? Huh? This quote is either a really bad translation or high comedy.

This is the way it should be done!

I understand that any electronic voting machine, if hacked, can completely invalidate an election. Therefore the only way to make a voting system credible is to encourage the public to develop, and crack it.

I personally think the OSTG, FSF, or some other open source advocacy group needs to start an open source, high profile, project to create an "uncrackable" solution for electronic voting. I know uncrackable is unobtainable, but there is a level where physical access to internal components is required to crack the system; and a system can be made with intrusion detection and prevention in place that when combined with proper physical security practices, a successful crack can only be done via significant corruption or some amazing social engineering.

I believe that ONLY the open source community could successfully develop such a voting system. Not because of the technical expertise, but because any proprietary alternative will be suspect in the eyes of the voter.

Incentive?

How much is the reward for cracking it? Or is there none?

Either way, if it's less than what someone running for president can give you, then creating problems for themselves :D

100% foolproof guaranteed exploit

1. Go to relatives house
2. Hold gun to their head and insist that they vote for who you tell them to
3. Watch them cast the vote
4. Tell them that you will kill them and their pet rabbit if they tell anyone
5. Win the election

Sadly, that is a problem that will always exist if people aren't voting in a private cubicle in a public place.

After the recent postal voting in the UK, it was found that many heads of families coerced the rest of the family into voting a certain way. That just can't happen in a private cubicle where you can always lie to dad later, but vote for who you want to now.

Procedural comparison

How things work outside the United States:

• Government announces plan to implement a voting system.
• Government devises detailed plan for a system, working with experts in field.
• Government runs pre-launch plan for rigorous testing of system reliability. Experts invited to oversee tests.
• System implemented, possibly with modifications based upon lessons learned in testing.

How things work in the United States:

• Government announces plan to implement a voting system.
• Industry lobbyists head to Washington. Meet with lawmakers, attempting to steer business toward their sponsors.
• Dinners held, bribes exchanged.
• Select lawmakers refuse to give in to lobbyists, are denied funding for upcoming campaigns, lose next election. Most capitulate, are re-elected.
• Revised bill reintroduced. Spending increased by a factor of 10.
• Experts review bill, criticize flaws, are ignored. Who needs 'em?
• Bill to implement system passes. Includes provision allowing NSA to nuke a US city without prior oversight if it finds suspicious activity in said city. Pre-absolves president of guilt for said annihilation. Also includes subsidy of corn processing industry in midwest, tax breaks for plastics industry executives. Last-minute rider added to provide additional funding for superhighway from Mexico to Kansas (now standard in all bills), and provide funding for evangelical law school that advocates a new wars to prevent the coming of the Antichrist.
• President signs bill in televised ceremony. Pen used to sign bill is framed.
• System implemented with no modifications. Massive failures nationwide.
• Experts point out that they predicted failures, are ignored again. Who needs 'em? Industry spokespersons call experts 'communists trying to undermine the free market,' deny there are any problems. Evening news ignores story, focuses on a recent celebrity divorce.
• Lawmakers vow to raise new spending bill to correct problems. Lobbyists return to Washington ...

Internet Voting

The real problem of Internet Voting isn't that you can hack the system. Even if you have an unhackable system, Internet Voting is still a bad idea.

In a voting booth, you can put your vote wherever you want, even if someone bribed or threatened you or your family to make you vote his way. You can put your mark somewhere else, nobody will know.

At home, your vote can be checked before it's sent.

make it easier on the hackers

It seems that with things like this, they usually fall because the programmers are either incompetent or lazy, and do not write code that is secure by design. Because of that they are scared stiff that someone will get a peek at the source code and find their sloppy hacks, identify careless assumptions, or discover that the outwardly formidable security is based on a model with a difficult to fix design flaw.

So they should publish the source code to the machines. There's nothing like a good public mugging to quickly uncover any stupid code. As is well known, any security code that cannot withstand public review is worthless. Anyone that says their code has to remain private to remain secure is admitting their code is NOT secure, and that it's merely a matter of time before it's compromised.

Hello Diebold, are you LISTENING? idiots.

WRONG. Q: Can it be manipulated by insiders?

Wrong question, a straw man. The problem isn't outside hackers playing with the system, but political insiders who have full access to the machines and code inperceptibly changing elections and the voting logs. A hacker may not be able to change an election, but a fully vested operative in the voting machine company can. Want a real test? Give the testers full access to the machines from soup to nuts. All code, accumulators, logs, access to the paper trail printouts, the works. NOW can they change the election?

Yes. Always, untraceably, if you can manipulate the traces.

This test they are running is worthless. They are playing to the myth of the superhacker, master of all crimes. The problem with evoting is that the evoting system programmers own the democracy, and you cannot test for that.

These evoting systems are the answer to the question: how do we fix elections without anyone noticing, or even understanding the system so that they notice that we can? The paper systems are foolproof, if done correctly, as in Canada. Those systems aren't broken. So we are fixing an uncrackable system for one that is cracked by design.

People. Someone is really determined to own democracy. Follow the money.

at least...

at least other governments are taking initiatives to try and make better electronic voting systems. This one seems to like the minibar key access control protocol :D

This is truly a wonderful thing.

I wish every country would allow open inspections like this.
Hacker here is just a buzz word, but basically it's an open invitation for all security experts and amatures to
inspect and search for hole and problems before commiting to a potentially flawed system.

This is trully the only way to ensure a secure system and also provide a level of confidence to the public that will need to trust it.

In the USA our systems are terrably flawed and there has been much evidence that they deliberately cover up security hold problems and evidence of outright election fraud.
www.mailclad.com

John

Voting...

It's a great idea, and it would definitely gain more voters who hate fighting the irate crowds... and avoiding bombs. It would be nice if the US actually had an OS that was secure enough to support something like this. Unfortunately, they can't even keep their own computer voting booths secure, let alone one on the internet.

And the goal is?

Make sure that the software they use to commit election fraud is safe from hackers?

Election fraud is as likely, if not more, to come from the government (or parts thereof) organizing the elections as it is to come from outsiders. And insiders don't need to crack the electronic voting servers, they have direct access to them.

This is why electronic voting cannot be trusted. There is no way for the voter to verify the software being run on election day.

Re:won't change much

I'd say its very related to the subject. Sounds like you're on the sick and criminal side of this debate.

Re:won't change much

they'll still keep murdering [people.com.cn] anyone who makes a stand for human rights

I wouldn't source People's Daily Online, which is known for having just a little bias [people.com.cn], especially when China hasn't been doing very well in the area of abductions [amnesty.org] or human [hrw.org] rights [amnesty.org] itself.

Re:Gentlemen

All your elections are belong to us !

Re:Wiki government

Well, the latter is not really a wiki. More of a scored discussion, it looks like.

A Slashdot government?

Hey mods, supress your knee-jerk reaction

0wn th31r machines and figure out how to make sure the Boss isn't in the room telling the v0t3r how t0 v0t3!!!

Whoever modded this as troll missed an important point: no hacking/counterhacking measures will prevent voters being influenced by their bosses or bribed or forced to vote by abusive spouses, yada, yada, yada, you get the point.

Unless of course the e-voting procedure requires a signoff from a trusted third party who assures that the voter isn't showing their vote to their boss /person who paid them/ abusive spouse, yada, yada, yada, you get the point.

Re:Hey mods, supress your knee-jerk reaction

I would like to know what's so seriously wrong with Paper ballots counted by people that we want to abandon them? People have

2000 Florida, USA is one example.

I would like to know why so many places are trying to move to more expensive, more complex, less secure means of voting when a better method already exists. I'm all for using computers where they have a place, such as things like filing taxes, but I fail to see the need for computers in voting.

You just answered your own question. It's exactly like taxes. It keeps you from having to go somewhere or mail something out to get (taxes/voting) done. This'll allow people to vote from work, take 5 minutes at breakfast to place their vote before leaving for work. All kinds of good reasons for the voters.

It doesn't speed up the counting process.

Oh yes it does. Tabulation takes seconds instead of days/weeks/months. You only have to do a hand count if it's challenged.

It doesn't make it any cheaper.

Yes it does. Computers are cheaper then people.

And it doesn't put any extra security into the system.

Now this is the #1 argument against electronic/internet voting. This is also the reason I'm still on the fence about the whole thing. There are many benefits but if all it accomplishes is to allow people to rig elections easier, then it's not worth it. Until they start paying more attention to the security aspect, I'm staying on the fence.

Re:Forget profit; this isn't even appealing for fa

There have been numerous elections using voting machines that have given government-collapsing results, like that vote last election in some district in Texas that popped up with 100,000 more votes than they had registered voters. Even the Republicans in the district went bonkers.

But, no one understood the problem in reporterland, and sure as hell citizens haven't cared. The big collapses have occurred -- and NO ONE CARED.