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."

the philippines is famous

[circletimessquare]

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

It actually surprised me

[grahamsz]

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.

Incentive?

[TwoPerfect]

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

Hey mods, supress your knee-jerk reaction

[archeopterix]

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:So...failure to disclose vulnerability?

[Anonymous Coward]

Thats a lot of trust though. You're relying on everyone being of the same mind...