Indian Election Officials Challenges Critics To Hack Electronic Voting Machine (thehindu.com)

Slashdot reader erodep writes: Following the recent elections in India, there have been multiple allegations of electoral fraud by hacking of Electronic Voting Machines... Two weeks ago, a party even "demonstrated" that these machines can be hacked. The Election Commission of India has rubbished these claims and they have thrown an open challenge, starting June 3rd to hack these EVMs using WiFi, Bluetooth or any internet device. This is a plea to the hackers of Slashdot to help secure the future of the largest democracy on the planet.
Each party can nominate three experts -- though India's Aam Aaadmi Party is already complaining that there's too many terms and conditions. And party leader Sanjay Singh has said he also wants paper ballots for all future elections, arguing "All foreign countries like America, Japan, Germany and Britain have gone back to ballot paper."

Comments

Re:How to embarrass your country in one easy step

[ShanghaiBill]

The challenge is meaningless. It is far easier to install a backdoor than to detect one. Heartbleed went undetected for years, and that was an unintentional bug with full source available to anyone. A maliciously designed backdoor, specifically designed to be hidden, would be far harder to detect. It is not clear from TFA if the hackers will have access to the source code, but since it says they will not be allowed to "tweak" the EVMs, it sounds like they will not, and they certainly will not be allowed to recompile to install instrumentation to capture intermediate state. They are also only give 4-5 days, which is nowhere near enough time to understand a complex system.

This "hacker challenge" is designed to ensure failure. Why? They only reason I can think of is that they are hiding something.

Only one way

[EmperorOfCanada]

There is only one way to do electronic elections.

You can have an electronic ballot machine, and it will store and tabulate the votes.

The key part is that it also prints the ballot in large clear print showing what you picked. This paper ballot is the "source of truth". So the election will use the electronic ballots for a quick result. Any interested party can participate in scrutinizing the paper ballots and in the case of a discrepancy, the paper ballots will be used.

As for online voting, HELL NO.

Hiding behind definitions

[hyades1]

Maybe the machines can't be "hacked", as we commonly define the word. But somewhere, one or more people have the keys to the kingdom: the passwords, code, access, and whatever else is necessary to make the machines do whatever they're told to do, then remove all proof they were compromised.

So all these "hack it, if you can" dares mean nothing. "Hacked" does not mean "compromised", though people with a real interest in stealing an election would like us all to forget that distinction.

Unless the machine spits out a paper ballot on the spot, and the voter can immediately rectify a wrongly-recorded vote (with proof), anything is possible. Only complete idiots would trust a vote-by-machine election without some unimpeachable method for verifying the results.

The indian EVM is very simple

[140Mandak262Jamuna]

As far as I remember the Indian EVM (Electronic Voting Machine) is a very simple thing, 64 registers, all simple ripple counters. Button push to vote. Two interlocks, Vote button disabled till the controller unlocks it. Controller is locked till vote button is pressed once. Thus multiple press of vote button is not possible. Controller is at the table of the election official with representatives from contestants present and watching. Voting machine has a small privacy screen. I think one controller and one voting machine per booth. It had no bluetooth or wifi or IR or ethernet or any form of communication.

Voting data is extracted by taking a memory module out of the machine and plugging it into a tabulator or something. The memory chip is physically transported to the tabulator under seal. Police, election officials and agents accompany the chip. This was what the documentary showed way back when it was introduced.

This machine was designed by an engineer for BEL (Bharat Electronics Limited) who is very famous for his writings. He goes by the pen name Sujatha and has written wonderful science fiction, mystery novels, humorous articles and some formal literature and formal poetry.