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.

On A Voting Machine?

[WrongSizeGlass]

Doesn't that mean we'll need an audit trail to verify a player's score?

Re:On A Voting Machine?

[sharkey]

No, it means we'll need anti-virus and a condom dispenser.

What would Namco say?

[tepples]

From the article:

This project is neither endorsed by nor affiliated with Namco (the developer of Pac-Man) or Midway (the U.S. distributor).

Expect a cease and desist like this one in 3, 2, 1...

Re:What would Namco say?

[Purity Of Essence]

Cease and desist what exactly? They aren't distributing anything other than a video. As a news item about re-purposing voting machines, fair use seems to be on their side concerning Pac-Man imagery appearing in the video.

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:What would Namco say?

[tepples]

Cease and desist copying the Pac-Man program into RAM to run it on the emulator. That's what the retained lawyers that MBGMorden mentioned might say.

Re:What would Namco say?

[MightyMartian]

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

wrong title

[circletimessquare]

"Corporate Dollars Reprogram Voters To Elect PACmen"

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Political_action_committee

Repurpose them as educational systems

[TheHawke]

Reprogram them so they can go to work in schools as touchscreen systems for pre-k to 6th graders. They were built to take a beating so a bunch of kids could not put much of a hurt on them, right?

This is terrible news

[Anonymous Coward]

We don't need people in government going around chasing ghosts.

We need to do something about the threat from space invaders.

At some point

[Dyinobal]

At some point you can't get away with calling yourself researchers. What next "Researchers strap fireworks to cat"

Re:At some point

[Spatial]

Are you implying that Powered Feline Flight is not a respectable scientific publication?

Close but not quite

[dreamchaser]

Actually I think we are in more danger from Asteroids than from Space Invaders.

"insecure electronic voting"

[acid06]

This is terribly biased.

Brazil has been using electronic voting country-wide for more than a decade and no party complains about its security - everyone considers them much more secure than the old and easy-to-tamper-with paper ballots.

I honestly don't understand why there is such bias against electronic voting on Slashdot since, in theory, it's a "nerd community".

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.

Re:"insecure electronic voting"

[tolgyesi]

As far as I understand the problem with the typical US voting machine is that the vendors keep the actual algorithm secret and they do not produce paper trails. These machines were designed specifically for election fraud.

This is more obvious to the "nerd community" than to ordinary people.

Re:"insecure electronic voting"

[echnaton192]

The problem is, that you can't proof the result is correct.

They tried to use election machines in Germany for their cost-effectedness and in order to get the results faster.

The experts of the CCC (www.ccc.org) could show how easy it is to tamper with it.

The High Court used their expertise to state that while electronic voting machines are not per se forbidden, the only way they would be allowed is by making them as easy to proof as an old fashioned ballot box.

E.g. providing a print out so the voter could proof his vote was correctly counted. But this print out would have been able for a recount.

And that is were it begins to get funny: Every voter has the right to watch the process of the counting and the preparation and has the right to be able to SEE the votes are counted in a correct way. So you wait for the voting day to be over, wait for the electronic results and then - DEMAND a recount of the printouts.

The High Court stated that while every citizen has the right to see for himself that everything went OK, there is NO constitutional right for an early result.

The voting computers were put out of business.

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:Who do we blame?

[commodore64_love]

>>>Ultimately I'm a proponent of computerized voting

But the flaw with this and virtually all the other machines adopted between 2001 and 2003 is there's no paper trail. That means the results can easily be changed and no way to audit the results.

The system we had in Maryland (before it got thrown out) was just about perfect. You simply drew a line next to the candidate you wanted, and then the ballot was scanned immediately and tallied. It ensured the vote was registered before the voter left, had the rapid counting ability of a computer, but still provided a paper trail for later auditing of the computer's tally.

Then they threw away for a system with no paper trail. Stupid.

Interesting

[sjames]

It was just a quick comment in TFA, but they were able to do this WITHOUT damaging the seals on the device.

With any luck, this and similar efforts will give the things enough resale value that only 95% of the taxpayer's money will end up flushed down the toilet.