Researchers Reprogram Voting Machine To Run Pac-man

Philom writes "Numerous scientific studies have demonstrated that electronic voting machines can be reprogrammed to steal votes, so when researchers Alex Halderman and Ari Feldman got their hands on a machine called the Sequoia AVC Edge, they decided to do something different: they reprogrammed it to run Pac-Man. As states move away from insecure electronic voting, there's a risk that discarded machines will clog our landfills. Fortunately, these results show that voting machines can be recycled to provide countless hours of entertainment."

Comments

Game over, man

[elrous0]

And I, for one, welcome our new l33t haXor Congressmen and Presidents.

Re:What would Namco say?

[MBGMorden]

If Namco doesn't like it they'll send the letter anyways. If if you're legally ok, is it worth hiring a lawyer to go to court and fight it? Namco (like most large companies) keeps one on staff, so sending him to court is just them using a paid for asset.

The sad truth is that in today's society, if a corporation says to stop doing something, it's usually smart to stop it. You can't afford to prove your innocence.

Re:"insecure electronic voting"

[Halo1]

Yes, e-voting, after a lot of effort can be compromised. Regular paper-ballot voting can be compromised by anyone, skilled or not, with not a lot of effort at all. Any voting system can be compromised. I don't honestly understand why the Slashdot community dislike e-voting that much.

Paper-ballot voting can also be verified by anyone, skilled or not. That is one of the most important parts of an election: that virtually anyone can check on the process.

There are also no chances of accidental errors with paper-ballot voting, while bugs in electronic voting machines are known to have caused votes to be lost in the past.

Furthermore, you're talking as if paper ballot voting is without any protection at all. At least in Belgium,

• all political parties have the right to send a single witness to every voting location
• on the morning of the election, at every voting location someone from the local overseeing committee (both appointed citizens and representatives from all political parties) draw a number from 1 to 9 (using basically a papers-in-a-hat principle), and then every ballot is stamped in the grid location corresponding to that number (mentally divide the ballot in a 3 by 3 grid, and number them from top-left to bottom-right). Any ballot with a stamp in a different location is discarded, and a copy of a "master ballot" with the stamp in the right location is part of the official report of the proceedings
• the containers in which the ballots have to be deposited have to be clearly visible to all members of the overseeing committee at all times, and at the start of the election it is checked whether they are empty (and after that they are locked)
• prior to the start of the voting, the number of available (blank) ballots is counted this is recorded
• at the end, number of remaining blank ballots is counted and this is recorded, as well as the total number of people that voted
• the cast votes are counted with all of the members of the overseeing committee present

There are more things, but in general every step is observed by a lot of different people with different interests, everyone can understand everything that happens and hence also verify that it happens correctly.

Compare that to a computer. Even the average Slashdotter probably has no idea how to start verifying that it works correctly, contains no bugs or backdoors, and that everything was recorded correctly.

Of course, there is a solution: perform electronic voting *with a paper trail*, so that you can always verify the outcome in case of doubt. But for some reason that's not very popular.

Re:What would Namco say?

[MightyMartian]

I'd make it a criminal offense to assert copyright violation where none exists.