Voting machines hacked, votes stolen in POC attack
Researches at the University of California, San Diego, have used a new programming technique to hack a voting machine. What is really scary about this attack, is that the researchers did not need the source code or other unlikely insider information to do it. All they needed was the information that someone would have by having possession of a voting machine. The electronic voting movement makes a lot of sense as a principal; it would hopefully eliminate a lot of waste, improve accuracy, speed up result, and reduce or eliminate controversy. Unfortunately, electronic votes represent one of the top, say, five juciest targets for a hacker imaginable (right next to pwning a bank, a nuclear missile silo, a nuclear power plant, and the Hubble Space Telescope, I’m guessing). In my opinion, the world of computer science has not invented the hack proof system (other than one that is powered off), so I beleive that we are not ready for electronic voting.
J.Ja
I knew Obama getting elected was too good to be true. Kidding of course.
I understand your point but…Are we ready for online banking then?
Based on my scanning of the paper, it seems like we’re safe, so long as the the machines are unplugged until just prior to letting people vote. From what I understand, the hack only lasts until power is cut.
Nevertheless, it’s troubling and it’s just one more reason to have a paper trail. I’m not against electronic voting, so long as there is a paper back up. Without it, they could perform this type of hack, and when the plug was pulled after election day, the hack would disappear, so it’d seem like the results were legit, even if they were not.
In the end, there’s not perfect system. Electronic is less prone to error, but that doesn’t help in this case.
@Jose
You can’t compare online voting to online banking. You hack someone’s ATM/credit card and you’re talking about maybe a few thousand dollars stolen which is insured for the individual. You hack the online voting system and you’re talking about stealing an election.
@notgonnatellya
The problem is, even with a paper trail… who is to say that the hack doesn’t affect the printer? The only truly reliable paper trail would be to have the voter duplicate they entire set of choices on a paper ballot, and that is only reliable as far as you can trust a human to properly mark up the paper, not only to their own choices, but to precisely match the choices they made in the voting machine. Sure, no doubt they’d get it right for the big items like President or Senator, but for the school superintendent? Maybe not.
The only alternative that I see, would be a hybrid electronic/paper ballot system. Say, have mechanical buttons that punch a paper ballot with the choices, and after each “page”, a slot-machine style crank to tell the electronic screen to go to the next page, and advance the punch buttons to the next line on the paper at the same time. Any of the “paper trails” that involve the coting machine connecting to a printer aren’t good enough in my book.
J.Ja
Then again, we have to consider how much power a person in a particular job has and how checks and balances is there to correct that. While even the President has executive orders that can make some changes, the overall system should be relatively safe even if the worst person wins. Then again, we have the electoral college to also prevent some of this. Now the worst case scenario would be if some one stole an election where more than 1/3 of the Senate was up for grabs. Although congress is up for grabs every election.
Nix my previous thoughts, if the system is hacked, we might be in a bit of a pickle.
@nucrash
The more I think about it, given the stinkers we’ve seen in the Presidency *and* Congress over the last, say, 50 years or so, could the hackers do worse than the voters already do?
A while ago, I had the idea to trim the national debt by replacing elections with a lottery. Every US citizen can buy a lottery ticket, one per Social Security number, non transferable, for, say, $100. The person who wins the lottery gets to be President for 4 years.
J.Ja
@George Ou
I agree with you, hacking into my bank account wouldn’t have the same impact as stealing an election (nor would it be worth the hacker’s time). I was assuming you need to break into more than one voting machine to steal an election (unless the election is really a close one). Nevertheless, what I was thinking is that sometimes (if not often) technology is deployed or used in areas where convenience and cost savings are the only things taken in account and other concerns are only brought up when disasters occur.
@Jose
You fail to account for the following…
1. Hackers have Botnets which they can program to do the work and distribute the work for them.
2. If the end point is insecure, who is to say that the back end isn’t as riddled with holes.
@Justin James
“could the hackers do worse than the voters already do?”
If you don’t trust the hacker with your bank account, would you trust your country with him? As bad as some politicians are, we’re not in a bad enough jam to resort to a hacker/anarchist led revolution.
Jose, if someone had an exploit for one machine, then they have an exploit for many machines.
Eligible being the same requirements as to vote or be US president. Thirty-five is a nice requirement, and I don’t want any felons getting into office. Not that that doesn’t mean they can do a better job than the current administration.