Slashdot Mirror
The Mezonic Agenda: Hacking the Presidency
The book chronicles the final week before security expert Professor Chad Davis is to testify before Congress on the security of a commercial e-voting software product made by a fictitious company, Advice Software, Inc.
Davis' testimony will ultimately determine if the software will be implemented for use during the United States' 2004 presidential election, and therefore create a huge windfall for the company. The company will do anything and everything it can to ensure that Davis provides positive testimony. Advice will stop at nothing to complete their mission; that means they'll engage in multiple murders, kidnapping and a slew of other nefarious activities. All of this is addition to simultaneously attempting to corner the video chip market, and create video drivers that send subliminal messages about which candidate to vote for.
As Albert Einstein said, "Make everything as simple as possible, but not simpler." The plot could have been made much simpler to mimic reality and the current state of insecure e-voting systems. As in real life, the e-voting companies are getting away with providing insecure e-voting systems; under the nose of the Federal Election Commission (FEC) and an unsuspecting and apathetic voting public. The idea that an e-voting software company would resort to murder is where the book demonstrates it is a novel.
The reason e-voting companies and their insecure software can run roughshod through the FEC is that voting-system flaws do not have the same immediate tragic consequences that other product failures can. Plane crashes and adverse drug effects spur the FAA and FDA to take drastic actions and often overreact to an event; poorly written and insecure voting software is clearly not as newsworthy as a burning jet.
Combine this with a public that is utterly apathetic to voting in general and the situation is ripe for the situation where e-voting can have a near hypnotic effect on most people involved. Because voter turnout for U.S. presidential elections is quite low (60% of eligible voters cast their ballots in the November 2000 presidential election), and most people are completely unaware of the dangers of insecure voting applications, an under-funded federal agency can be manipulated by the e-voting vendors to roll out insecure voting software.
The international intrigue of the novel takes the reader to the RSA security conference in Amsterdam, where Davis is given a cryptic CD-ROM by Baff Lexicon, a notorious international hacker. Lexicon suggests there is serious problems with the software and will brief Davis at midnight that night at the Amsterdam Hard Rock Cafe on the details. Unfortunately, Lexicon is being trailed by undercover agents from Advice, and is murdered a few hours later by a Yugoslavian hit man that the company seems to have on retainer.
Davis now has the difficult job of unlocking the cryptic information on the CD-ROM on his own. That same CD-ROM is included with the book, and the reader is invited to join Davis in attempting to decrypt the contents of the CD and the conspiracy that Advice Software is attempting to perpetrate; namely the outcome of the 2004 election.
(If you are not interested in buying the book, anyone can download the software without having to buy the book. The software is actually part of a contest and the winner will receive a free pass to the BlackHat 2005 conference.)
A good section of the novel then details how Davis attempts to decipher the secrets that Baff Lexicon was attempting to convey to him. The two authors of The Mezonic Agenda have, respectively, a PhD in applied mathematics and a Master's in chemical engineering, and write in a someone choppy style representative of their technical backgrounds. Occasional errors in grammar and spelling are excused, save for the egregious misspelling of Learjet on page 154.
The story concludes with a moral dilemma that Davis faces: with his wife and daughter kidnapped by the Advice Software hit man, does he provide favorable, yet dishonest testimony about the software and watch his family set free; or tell the truth and watch them die?
The novel itself takes up 240 of the books 370 pages, with the last five parts dedicated to a history of voting, reverse engineering, cryptography, buffer overflows and steganography.
As a standalone novel, the book (while entertaining and enjoyably readable) is somewhat overpriced at $34.95, especially since the enclosed CD-ROM is freely downloadable and the plot is somewhat thin. The non-fiction final section, though, is quite informative and effectively complements the novel.
This novel does a good job of explaining how software can be cracked, and provides the reader with a good overview of security concepts such as buffer overflows, reverse engineering, cryptography, and more. It is hoped that the book will find itself in the hands of members of Congress and the FEC, who truly need to be educated in such fundamental security topics.
As a novel, The Mezonic Agenda will not compete with books from Tom Clancy or Robert Ludlum. But because insecure e-voting is one of the greatest threats to democracy today, it is a much needed title.
You can purchase The Mezonic Agenda: Hacking the Presidency from bn.com. Slashdot welcomes readers' book reviews -- to see your own review here, read the book review guidelines, then visit the submission page.
In other words, "choose-your-own-adventure". It doesn't sound so impressive without the big words, does it?
Socialism: A feeling of discontent and resentment caused by a desire for the possessions or qualities of another.
Anyone think this was about Diebold?
Zero Day Exploit along the same lines. Also the "Hacking The Network" (here and here) series as well. Geeks make great authors, and when they write geeky stories, it's just the best of both worlds.
Find out about the Lexus Rx400h Hybrid!
... a certain melodrama and fantasy element... Ha! As if the NYT's bias isn't filled with such!!
"The best laid plans of mice and men gang oft agley..." - ROBERT BURNS
A troll? No, this is insightful with the continued exposure that pieces of software and books get on the front page.
There is absolutely no reason that Slashdot needs to be come a repository for Amazon.com book reviews. Maybe if someone in-house or even an avid Slashdot reader posted the review then it would be fucking relevant.
Keep the Slashvertising off the front page.
I'll wait till I've finished reading all the good books before I start on the second string. I only have a few thousand of those good ones to go.
See what I've been reading.
When my brain first saw "Mezonic" it couldn't decide if it was some weird reference to the Mesozoic era or something to do with the Masons. What the heck is "Mezonic"?
I Am My Own Worst Enemy
include $sig;
1;
The problem with "real world" fiction such as this is that most people will either:
a) miss the point entirely (in this case that there is more to e-voting than pressing a button);
b) think "Way Off - can't happen here" (even when it has!);
c) ignore the book.
Maybe the way to do it is be more subtle (like Terry Pratchett, who wraps his attacks on society up in metaphor and allegory), or more gung-ho (like Dan Brown)
"She's furniture with a pulse"
Considerhttp://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/159 4030618/102-2587016-4696960>Stealing elections
In "Stealing Elections," John Fund takes the reader on a national tour of voter fraud scandals ranging from rural states like Texas and Mississippi to big cities such as Philadelphia and Milwaukee. He explores dark episodes such as the way "vote brokers" stole a mayoral election in Miami in 1998 by tampering with 4700 absentee ballots. He shows how, in the aftermath of the Motor Voter Law of 1993, Californians used mail-in forms to get absentee ballots for fictitious people and pets, while in St. Louis it was discovered that voter rolls included 13,000 more names than the U.S. Census listed as the total number of adults in the city.
Election officials are trying to reassure voters by turning to computerized voting machines. But Fund shows that with the new technology come even greater concerns. Early in 2004, for instance, the state of Maryland, which has 16,000 new Diebold machines, commissioned a security expert to try to rig a practice election. He and his team broke into the computer at the State Board of Elections, completely changed the outcome of the election, left, and erased their electronic trail--all in under five minutes.
"Stealing Elections" gives us a chilling portrait of our electoral vulnerability--in the 2004 presidential election and on into the future. Writing with urgency and authority, John Fund shows how a lethal combination of bureaucratic bungling and ballot rigging have put our democracy at risk.
The names have been changed to protect the innocent.
At one time I was a programmer working for the real life equivalant and I was horrified by the apathy the senior managment had for the software's security. All they cared about was having the software ready to sell by the time of the election, not having a fair election.
I spoke up and after rocking the boat to no avail (I even recieved not-so-subtle hints of losing my job). So I wrote a letter to the chairman of the FEC and my state senator and I was granted a hearing by the FEC where I was to be given the chance to present my case.
That was when they had a hitman show up at my house. Appearing like a trenchcoat wearing deamon he calmy walked up to my front stoop and kicked the door in. My doberman pincher tried to fight off the intruder but poor Billy got his head blown off by the Spas-12 shotgun the assasin carried. I was upstairs posting on Slashdot when I heard the noise and ran to the top of my stairs only to see Death empty three rounds of double odd buck into my belly.
I was dead before I hit the floor.
They took my body and dumped it out in Cheasapeake bay with old fashiond cement shoes and there I remain till this day.
>
Albert Einstein never said, "Make everything as simple as possible, but not simpler." Even though it is attributed to him zillions of times on the Internet (and sometimes even in print), there is never a source provided for this attribution. It is one of those myths that never seems to die, like Bill Gates' supposedly saying "640K ought to be enough for anybody."
I have not read the book, but what's above seems to be a synopsis of the entire plot. Shouldn't there have been some kind of spoiler warning? I'm not one of those people who consider the divulging of everything but the resolution of the final cliffhanger to be a non-spoiler.
Comment removed based on user account deletion
novels are written, to briefly take such men, out of that quiet desperation, even for a short while. Novels therefore require a certain melodrama and fantasy element
Well, some novels, maybe. I've heard it said that there used to be a habit in the 19th and 20th centuries to write novels in order to provide knowledge or moral teachings to the reader.
However, I can't find either of those topics in wikipedia, so maybe not...
it's a story about a flawed voting system and the lead character's named 'chad' ...
Utter rubbish. There are many many novels of extra-ordinary importance that have nothing to do with fantasy or melodrama. The parent is describing a certain middle to low brow sense of literature. People write and read stories for a multitude of reasons, and to say that books missing the aforementioned elements equate with reading the newspaper, just goes to show the parent's reduced sense of human existence and imagination as to what literature can be and do.
Also, the book he describes sounds terrible. I'll wait for the movie to come out and snag a torrent of it in a few years.
RS
Shoes for Industry. Shoes for the Dead.
Without doubt Thoreau's comment deserves serious consideration; it has been argued that people watch soap operas and follow favorite sports teams because everyday life lacks a certain sense of narrative; however, to imply that the news is not (significantly) dramatic is quite a commentary on life in general . . .
Regardless of your political leanings, if WMD suspicions, presentations at the UN, North Korean nuclear brinksmanship, war in Iraq, Manipulations of the truth arguably by those for and against war, Swift Boat Veterans for Truth, forged documents of a president's military record, and terrorist events in Paris, Madrid, Egypt, Saudi Arabia, and NY City are not dramatic enough for the reviewer, then perhaps the reviewer should be checked to see if he still has a pulse. If there was a choice between a "Choose you own Adventure" book and the real world, I would choose the real world.
I can only guess that the reviewer is either looking to sensationalize his piece with a quote and a small piece of flamebait or perhaps he is one of those that cannot appreciate or perhaps understand the complicated drama that unfolds in the news that affects our daily lives.
As Henry David Thoreau observed 'The mass of men lead lives of quiet desperation.'
And Pink Floyd said "Hanging on in quiet desperation is the English way."
Well, hmm... I thought I'd something more to say...
"A language that doesn't affect the way you think about programming, is not worth knowing" - Alan Perlis
Bought this last week. The story part reads as pretty bad fiction. Maybe I'm just used to reading Tom Clancy... some of the technical info is good, but there are a few gaps in the information present. There was one part in the story where I was totally lost.
As for the "hack along with the story" part, you can just download the zip and hack away. The back story helps a bit, but I had already cracked the thing a few weeks ago.
This is where participants in international intrigue are meeting these days to exchange secrets: exotic locales like the Hard Rock Cafe?
I miss the Cold War...
Read my blog.