http://arstechnica.com/etc/How_to_steal_an_election-ArsTechnica.pdf

@cailen: All modern microcontrollers made in the last decade (basically) can do in-circuit programming and debugging, meaning you just plug in a cable and flash the ROM. There is *no* reason for sockets in production! These should all be small surface mount chips soldered down and epoxyed over the pins (or something). It looks like they just went through an ancient parts bin and grabbed what they could. Seriously, it’s pathetic.

As far as security, it’s ridiculous (as seen in the video). One approach would be to use some sort of public key encryption system were registered voters get a key. Of course, that doesn’t really protect against these man-in-the-middle attacks if you can easily modify the hardware!

where i vote, and in most districts where i vote where the elections happen at country schools, old store buildings, etc., this would be easy to pull off.

im not in favor of doing so, but the fact that a couple of us could do it so quickly and so easily, well, thats something scary.

i agree that the makers of these machines need to open their original specs up to the hacking community [and make those machines obsolete immediately.]. the hacking community, much like the free market, will always yield the most effective results.

It is not that hard to make a system a little more secure.. just have a second system inside the case (disconnected from the voting system) checking all the important parts (like rom checksums and case integrity using sensors) and have this second system triggering an alarm on a network or even audible if anything is messed with.

The online server system would work only IF no connection between the voter and the vote is recorded. A paper could be printed in the machine for the voter assigning a random number (a password) to its vote (also in the paper). This way anyone could check its vote later and would not have its identity revealed.

and call me stupid, but how did you get the youtube video timer to count down (from 60), instead of go up?

I have never seen it before.

Also the votes could have encryption, but if the key was bribed off someone, then you could program the ROM with the encryption. And if they use these things in a state, think of a politician having a systematic attack on many of the major polling places. Even if there are countermeasures governments always love cheap stuff, so how many things are promised to be implemented, but never are.

chainging the vote: it takes a lot of time to destry and replace paper ballots. It takes mere seconds to do the same in digital form. There are a million things that computers are better at, but secure voting isn’t one of them. In paper ballot cases, hundreds of volunteers are caretakers of perhaps a few thousand votes each person. In digital form, a few ‘volunteers’ are checking millions of votes each. The right people, in the right place, with 5 seconds to kill.. can swing a digital election any way you want it to go.

without biometric voter verification and vote full visability, electronic elections are a sham. (vote visability means that 1: a voter can at any time see the result of their vote.. even years later, to verify that their vote still ‘exists’ somewhere, and was counted.) a paper trail exists for paper votes up to three years. virtually nothing exists in any true and unalterable form in the digital realm.

my suggestion slow down people by adding more screws and make their own screw head much like Nintendo did with their tri-wing screw, or Macdonald’s happy meal triangle screw (i am still not sure why they don’t want you to take apart their toys, maybe they have tracking devices built in they they don’t want you finding out about)

but in the end you can only slow them down, and make it so that changes will be visible. With the way the current election system is run there is nothing you can do to prevent them from modifying the results, whether it is voiding a machines votes or actually getting away with changing the data.