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Hackers Fail To Crack Brazilian Voting Machines
blueser writes "From Nov 10th to Nov 13th the Brazilian Government hosted a public hacking contest to test the robustness of its voting machines. 38 participants from private and public IT companies (including the Brazilian Federal Police) were divided into 9 teams, which tried several different approaches to try to tamper with the software installed on the machines, and even to physically interfere in other stages of the process. All attempts (aside from a minor one which would not compromise the overall results) failed, and observations from the participants and neutral observers will be taken into account to improve the process even further. Here is the official announcement for the contest (Google translation; Portuguese original). A summary of the results is available in the Brazilian press (original). Brazilian voting machines use Linux." US voting officials ought to be envious of their Brazilian counterparts, or ashamed, or both. Perhaps this MIT-developed cryptographic voting system offers a way forward.
Bah, it's also an open invitation for the American Gestapo to find vulns and exploit them without reporting them. Latin America is a very politically volatile market and there are plenty of opportunities to play both ends against the middle, so to speak.
And in addition - who knows, maybe they actually *did* find something and "just" don't want to disclose their findings, instead preferring to use the exploits themselves. Latin America is a rather less-than-stable political climate, after all.
A good education is a bit like a STD - it makes you unsuitable for a lot of jobs and gives you a desire to spread it.