California Testers Find Flaws In Voting Machines 167
quanticle writes "According to Ars Technica, California testers have discovered severe flaws in the ES&S voting machines. The paper seals were easily bypassed, and the lock could be picked with a "common office implement". After cracking the physical security of the device, the testers found it simple to reconfigure the BIOS to boot off external media. After booting a version of Linux, they found that critical system files were stored in plain text. They also found that the election management system that initializes the voting machines used unencrypted protocols to transmit the initialization data to the voting machines, allowing for a man-in-the-middle attack. Altogether, it is a troubling report for a company already in hot water for selling uncertified equipment to counties."
WhiteHat Voting (Score:5, Insightful)
1: Do like the rest of the world, and use a HB #2 pencil.
2: EFF and the rest of the American White hats get together and develop an Open Voting system, that are freely implementable by any state, that can withstand public scrutiny and peer review.
Paper please! (Score:2, Insightful)
How much more does it take? (Score:5, Insightful)
How much more does it take to see that it is a BAD idea?
Yes, paper voting is costy. But we're not talking something where cost is the deciding factor. Democracy is about two things: People participating in the government of their country, and people trusting the government of their country. In a democracy, people have (ok, should have) a say in their country's behaviour. And this in turn should give them a feeling of belonging, they should feel their country takes them serious and as more than just peons who can be ordered around, because they chose their government themselves. This usually means more trust and faith in their rulers, because they themselves chose them (not some divine right to rule or military force, they installed their government).
Especially the latter part is at risk. If you cannot easily debunk any claims of voting fraud, because the means to vote offer themselves for easy manipulation, you open your country for claims of illegal manipulations that cannot be disproved. You destroy the faith people have in their country and the support. Not that it was really necessary these days, people already started losing faith in the democratic process and democracy altogether. But this has the potential to be the last straw.
Cost is not an argument when it comes to voting. If you want people to support the government as wanted by the majority, you have to make sure that it will be seen as the will of the majority. If fraud is easy, dissenting people will always claim foul play and you will not have any chance to call them bad losers. You can't prove them wrong, quite the opposite, we have seen now time and again that they have every reason to be suspicious.
Re:ATM Machines (Score:5, Insightful)
Whats the point of e-voting (Score:5, Insightful)
Let's do it like the ancient Greeks ... (Score:3, Insightful)
Alternatively, just use a whole brick.
Re:Paper please! (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Whats the point of e-voting (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:Whats the point of e-voting (Score:5, Insightful)
With normal pen-and-paper voting, all skill you need is being able to count and discriminate between various candidates being chosing on the paper. You don't believe my count? You think I'm trying to fix elections? Here's the ballot, count for yourself.
With e-voting, you face a problem. You need very special skills to actually conduct a recount (if it is possible at all). Don't believe me that I'm not trying to fix elections in my favor? Sucks to be you if you don't happen to have the skills.
Re:How much more does it take? (Score:3, Insightful)
See? Easy to shoot down any claims of voting fraud. You can count, you can read, you can verify the voting count.
Now please tell me how I, common man, aged past 30 and let's assume I'm not an IT expert, should verify some "count" done by a voting machine.
Paper Seals = DoS? (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:WhiteHat Voting (Score:3, Insightful)
# All data is stored encrypted and signed.
All data should be stored in plain text, and signed with multiple hashes, keys and/or ciphers.
[/quote]
i think you nailed that one. most people forget that encryption is no good if you already have access to the key, and the software must have the key if it's supposed to make use of the data in the file. thus, a hacker has the key
remember people: signing good. crypting, not so good
howitzer for flies method (Score:2, Insightful)
Computers have a place in our society, using them for elections is not one of them. Sometimes the complicated method is not the preferred method, ie, using howitzers to shoot down flies. Look at the wishlist of complicated crap you want to try and make it secure. I mean, really, just don't use computers in the first place. Make the vote a 24 hour period, and a national holiday so there is little excuse to not vote, and use paper ballots. Every fix the computers scheme out there always falls back on a paper trail. duh, just use paper then! Eliminate that complicated middleman. That and instant runoff voting or something like that combined with severe caps on campaign financing (it shouldn't take hundreds of millions of dollars to run campaigns, and face reality, these are almost pure bribes once you look at them hard, set a hundred dollar cap on all combined contributions per human per election cycle) would improve the political process immensely, Computerized voting machines are designed to be voting manipulation devices,and taxpayer cash suckers, fullstop. It's just generally a totally bad idea, this trying to fix computerized voting is turd polishing.
Re:WhiteHat Voting (Score:2, Insightful)
The easy answer, and incidentally the correct one, is: You don't.
If you put your X on the wrong candidate, you exit the booth and get a new ballot, while the old one is ripped in half.
Re:WhiteHat Voting (Score:2, Insightful)
Elections should be run by competent people, so politicians should really just stay away from the process.