Florida County Asks Students To Crack Elections

imAck writes: "After the election fiasco last year in Florida, many have discussed the possibilities of using a computerized voting system to replace the old punch-card ballot system. Florida's Broward county is considering buying a $20 million dollar computerized touchscreen system to handle future elections. What makes the story interesting is how they are planning to test the system for security holes. The county plans on holding mock elections in high schools and at senior citizen communities. They are actually asking the students to try and hack into the system during the mock elections to learn of possible security issues." I wonder if Broward County would look into spending their money on hardware and supporting development of the GNU Project's existing electronic voting software.

Comments

Re:A danger

[Tackhead]

> Of course, if someone found an exploit, would they report it? Or simply leave it be, and use it during the election?

When either Eric Raymond or Bill Gates is elected President, we'll know for sure.

I cracked it

[bwt]

I just cracked the voting system they are proposing to use. Unfortunately, because of the DMCA, I cannot share the technical details, other than to say that it does involve a double application of the rot-13 technology.

Not all kids are computer geniuses...

[stefanlasiewski]

The county plans on holding mock elections in high schools and at senior citizen communities. They are actually asking the students to try and hack into the system during the mock elections to learn of possible security

Grownup: "Hey you! You're a teenager, you must know something about these copmuter-ma-thingies. You listen to MP3's, that means you're a computer-hacka ... whatchamacallit ... hacker. Right?"

Kid: "Uh yeah, sure. I guess so"

Grownup: "Great! Great! Try to hack into this computer and ruin the election".

Kid (Avid reader of Pointy Haired Weekly for Teens) logs into computer, discovers that there is no C:\ prompt, and give up.

Kid: "Well sir, this computer is unhackable."

Grownup: "Yes! Yes! We are secure! SECURE! We'll see if those half-blind, senile senior citizens can screw up the *next* election!" ...

Why not make this contest open to the public ?

Re:A danger

[ackthpt]

A danger only in the sense that the surest way to crack it is for whichever side has appointed the most justices, to appeal to the Supreme Court and have the results tossed out on some grounds, such as there being no hard copy, or could have been faked, or there was a smudge on the screen which made 'B-u-c-h-a-n-a-n' look like 'G-o-r-e'

Pregnant pixels, anyone?

Some people love to make things complicated

[Anonymous Coward]

What is it with American elections? Isn't ticking the box on a voting slip good enough? It seems to be good enough for just about every other 1st world country. Is there some farcical requirement in the constitution that elections be complicated, weird and produce dubious results?

This is just like that episode of "The Simpsons" where they're holding a referendum by blowing out candles, flushing toilets, droping pebbles in jars, pulling on one-armed bandits and other such nonsense. Now we introduce computers. Hell, I wouldn't trust any large scale software project I've ever worked on to count my vote.

One word, KISS.

The election results

[DuncanMurray]

And the new President is...


Cowboy Neal??