Dutch Blackbox Voting Pwned

An anonymous reader writes, "In a just-published report (PDF, in English, cached here), the Dutch we-don't-trust-voting-computers foundation (Dutch and English) details how it converted a Nedap voting machine, of a type used in Holland and France, to steal a pre-determined percentage of votes and reassign them to another party. The paper describes in great detail how 'anyone, when given brief access to the devices at any time before the election, can gain complete and virtually undetectable control over the election results.' As a funny bonus, responding to an earlier challenge by the manufacturer, the researchers reflashed a voting machine to play chess. The news was on national television (Dutch) last night and is growing into a major scandal. 90% of the votes in the Netherlands are cast on these machines and national elections will be held in a month." Please create mirrors for the 8.1-MB PDF and post their URLs. You might also try John Graham-Cumming's l8r.org service to tell you when the slashdot effect subsides from any of the mirrors.

Comments

Re:Well at least..

[Ryano]

"they can't open it with a minibar key.."

Don't be so sure...

From their report (the PDF linked above):

The key system chosen by Nedap for both the locks on the voting computer is the "C&K YL Series 4 Tumbler Camlock". This lock always comes with the same key (marked "A126"), which probably explains why the same key is used on all 8000 ES3B machines throughout The Netherlands. Spare keys can be ordered separately online for roughly a Euro each by searching for the product number: 115140126. We ordered, payed for and were subsequently supplied with 100 of these keys without any problem. According to the product datasheet3, typical applications for this lock include "copy machines and office furniture". Even if spare keys were not so readily available: this is quite literally the type of lock we can open with a bent paperclip.

The reader unit has, as stipulated by law, a lock with a different key for the slot marked 'programming' (it is marked "A154"), which is used to erase the ballot memory modules and to write new candidate lists to the modules. The key is of the same insecure type and the we expect it to also be the same all over the country.