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Florida County Asks Students To Crack Elections

Posted by ryuzaki0 on from the redesigning-the-design-phase dept.

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.

4 of 370 comments (clear)

  1. Re:And then... by mmaddox · · Score: 5, Interesting

    Having worked for the Secretary of State here in Florida (and working on the first couple of election results systems for the Florida Dept. of State, Division of Elections), I feel confident saying that the problems in Florida are mostly due to sheer incompetence. The few people who actually know anything aren't compensated enough to stay on, and the rest rely on Peter Principle to stay in their positions. Problem is, this incompetence allows those who are truly evil to have free reign over the elections. It's not some big, carefully orchestrated plot, it's pure opportunism - wait around for a big enough screw up, and have your fun during the resulting confusion.

    --

    What'dya mean there's no BLINK tag!?

  2. Re:Could they at least publish the source by Sarcasmooo! · · Score: 3, Interesting

    Since the $20 million is being paid to a corporate contractor, I wonder what the DMCA or, some area of copyright law is going to do to that concept.

  3. Optical Scanning Already Works Better by tbmaddux · · Score: 5, Interesting
    Caltech and MIT have studied voting technology. Their report released last month found that hand-counting and optically scanned paper had the lowest counts of unmarked, uncounted, and spoiled ballots in presidential, Senate and governor elections over the last 12 years. And over the same time period, electronic voting systems were the second worst!

    Who needs hackers if the electronic systems already suck?

    --
    Can't you see that everyone is buying station wagons?
  4. Re:Good to see that college education working for by thrig · · Score: 3, Interesting

    They did that with some test Windows 2000 box, which nobody broke into as I recall. (Golly, Windows 2000 must be secure!) However, Windows 2000 started getting cracked once Microsoft started shipping the negligent bloatware (yup, still have not fixed that virus-bearing document format). This is due to crackers getting to sit a Windows 2000 box down, rip it apart, and otherwise get their hands on it, rather than poking sticks at an ivory tower somewhere.

    Plus, with the recent SMDI thingy, I think some folks would be wary to take up a corporations offer "hack this, please, we won't beat you up with the DMCA. honest."