Slashdot Mirror
Hackers Invited To Crack Internet Voting
InternetVoting writes "The Philippine government and the International Foundation for Electoral System will be soliciting hackers to test the security of of their Internet voting system that will be tested in an upcoming pilot program." From the article,"Local and foreign computer hackers will be tapped to try and break into an Internet-based voting system that will be pilot tested by the country's Commission on Elections (Comelec) starting July 10."
they got a formal invitation this time?
I'm sure all the REAL hackers will RSVP.
Of course any hacker with intentions of being a naughty boy is not going to show up and (a) make himself known or (b) reveal the holes.
Engineering is the art of compromise.
Almost certainly, they are recording ALL the packets that travel across the line as well as checking the state of the system. And if not, then they deserve what will happen. And if it is on a OSS platform, then they will be able to modify the kernel so that it gives more info during the cracking attempt.
I prefer the "u" in honour as it seems to be missing these days.
Two words: honeypot system.
The way I would do something like this is to put the voting system inside a fully monitored and logged virtual machine. Then I would open it up to hackers, knowing that all changes to the system state will be logged and can be scanned for malicious actions.
We all know what to do, but we don't know how to get re-elected once we have done it
Seriously, nothing to see here, move along...
On a related topic = I can't believe our Comelec is advertising this thing, a few months ago they don't even have a feasible electronic voting solution. I remember that they got a "Diebold" like deal for use in the last national elections but we know that the expensive machines had been now rotting in warehouses (and never had seen the light of the day, that makes Diebold more succesful). There are even local programmers/firms who are willing to "donate" their services just to make the election electronic but I guess that did not work out.
And I still don't have that promised "Electronic Voter's ID" when I registered at 18 (I'm in my 20's now). Now, how could they validate if I am the one who had casted my vote.. Hmmm...
As I said, nothing to see here.. move along.. I'm going to make some coffee...
Regards,
I think they're trusting that more than one person will notice it. With OSS, we know that it's possible someone will find a security bug and not report it because that would benefit them. We also figure that there's a high enough probability of someone else noticing too that the first person's secrecy will be nullified anyway. With the people who pay for each issue you find, the hacker has a better shot at cash through trying to report it first than through hoping nobody else does.
look! it's a bird, it's a plane, it's....a girl? yes, a girl browsing Slashdot on Linux
So how do you make sure that they tell you of a hack they do find? What is to prevent them from failing to disclose said hack and sell it for a tidy sum to China?
A Good Troll is better than a Bad Human.
"That could possibly give them the power to take over a country, or receive some big payments from a political party who would really like to win"
Sounds like a diebold system to me.
09 F9 11 02 9D 74 E3 5B - D8 41 56 C5 63 56 88 C0 45 5F E1 04 22 CA 29 C4 93 3F 95 05 2B 79 2A B2
Because they're living there ?
Democracy is valued in some countries you know...
The Wise adapts himself to the world. The Fool adapts the world to himself. Therefore, all progress depends on the Fool.
1. Go to relatives house
2. Hold gun to their head and insist that they vote for who you tell them to
3. Watch them cast the vote
4. Tell them that you will kill them and their pet rabbit if they tell anyone
5. Win the election
Sadly, that is a problem that will always exist if people aren't voting in a private cubicle in a public place.
After the recent postal voting in the UK, it was found that many heads of families coerced the rest of the family into voting a certain way. That just can't happen in a private cubicle where you can always lie to dad later, but vote for who you want to now.
How things work outside the United States:
How things work in the United States:
The saddest poem
Wrong question, a straw man. The problem isn't outside hackers playing with the system, but political insiders who have full access to the machines and code inperceptibly changing elections and the voting logs. A hacker may not be able to change an election, but a fully vested operative in the voting machine company can. Want a real test? Give the testers full access to the machines from soup to nuts. All code, accumulators, logs, access to the paper trail printouts, the works. NOW can they change the election?
Yes. Always, untraceably, if you can manipulate the traces.
This test they are running is worthless. They are playing to the myth of the superhacker, master of all crimes. The problem with evoting is that the evoting system programmers own the democracy, and you cannot test for that.
These evoting systems are the answer to the question: how do we fix elections without anyone noticing, or even understanding the system so that they notice that we can? The paper systems are foolproof, if done correctly, as in Canada. Those systems aren't broken. So we are fixing an uncrackable system for one that is cracked by design.
People. Someone is really determined to own democracy. Follow the money.
Bullish Machine Tzar