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Another item from Def Con 26, which ended the other day, an 11-year-old was easily able to change tallies on real electronic voting equipment within minutes. These machines are designed not to leave any evidence when tampering happens so it was useful that there were many witnesses present for her demo.
Election hackers [sic] have spent years trying to bring attention to flaws in election equipment. But with the world finally watching at DEFCON, the world's largest hacker conference, they have a new struggle: pointing out flaws without causing the public to doubt that their vote will count.
This weekend saw the 26th annual DEFCON gathering. It was the second time the convention had featured a Voting Village, where organizers set up decommissioned election equipment and watch hackers [sic] find creative and alarming ways to break in. Last year, conference attendees found new vulnerabilities for all five voting machines and a single e-poll book of registered voters over the course of the weekend, catching the attention of both senators introducing legislation and the general public. This year's Voting Village was bigger in every way, with equipment ranging from voting machines to tabulators to smart card readers, all currently in use in the US.
In a room set aside for kid hackers [sic], an 11-year-old girl hacked a replica of the Florida secretary of state's website within 10 minutes — and changed the results.
Earlier on SN:
Georgia Defends Voting System Despite 243-Percent Turnout in One Precinct
South Carolina's 13k Electronic Voting Machines Vulnerable, Unreliable
Top Voting Machine Vendor Admits It Installed Remote-Access Software on Systems Sold to States
(Score: 3, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday August 14 2018, @03:17PM (8 children)
Emphasis by me:
So it was an explicit design goal that you should not be able to detect if the results have been tampered with? In other words, those machines were designed to enable voting fraud?
(Score: 5, Insightful) by ikanreed on Tuesday August 14 2018, @03:33PM (5 children)
That's certainly the narrative that has been given by the very proximate anti-electronic-voting "side" in this debate.
Which is basically the only side, because the debate seems to be one group saying "there's big problems with this and it could destroy democracy" and the other going "we'll budget for 10 machines per district right now" not noticing the former group at all.
(Score: 3, Touché) by DeathMonkey on Tuesday August 14 2018, @06:21PM (4 children)
Also, one side knows they can only win by cheating...
(Score: 2) by ikanreed on Tuesday August 14 2018, @06:45PM (3 children)
If only it were only one side. The problem that power begats the tools to retain power with just a teensy bit of corruption.
It's not a solved problem, even with great* social tools we've invented like "democracy" and "transparency" and "checks and balances" and "free press". It's just too easy to take what control you have and put it towards keeping control.
*my own faith in these tools is not what it once was
(Score: 3, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday August 14 2018, @07:47PM (2 children)
If only it were only one side.
It is predominantly one side and one side only. Sure, you'll find crooked politicians in both parties, and in some local races you'll find cheating on either side, but when taken as a whole, there is one party that has made cheating a part of its core strategy, and another that has not. And in case it isn't clear, it's the party that lies an order of magnitude more often than the other (easily checked on numerous fact-checking sites which one, but in case you're at all confused, it's the party that used these techniques to install two presidents this century, neither of them African American).
(Score: 4, Interesting) by ikanreed on Tuesday August 14 2018, @08:20PM
I appreciate what you're saying since the republicans have reduced my state to "broken democracy" by international standards. But there's piles corruption of so many kinds it's very difficult to see the forest for the trees.
Because before these scumfuckers took over, redistricted to hell, denied hundreds of thousands the right to vote, shut down early voting, purged rolls, seized control of the election board, packed the state supreme court(pending), and did other seriously fucky things, the democrats took quid pro quo campaign donations pretty openly.
The republicans are vile anti-democracy scum who need to be extirpated, but the dems were pretty bad.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday August 15 2018, @11:32AM
> It is predominantly one side and one side only. Sure, you'll find crooked politicians in both parties, and in some local races you'll find cheating on either side, but when taken as a whole, there is one party that has made cheating a part of its core strategy, and another that has not. And in case it isn't clear, it's the party that lies an order of magnitude more often than the other (easily checked on numerous fact-checking sites which one, but in case you're at all confused, it's the party that used these techniques to install two presidents this century, neither of them African American).
What I found really interesting, is reading through your post, I could not tell which party you were on about until you brought race into it. If you remove your last line about race, from my vantage point both your parties fit the bill, because quite frankly, both of them are as bent as corkscrews.
This "my party is better than your party" bullshit is the reason you lot are in this political mess right now. That and the fact you generally never vote for third parties, calling them "throwaway votes" and the like, which is the wrong attitude to have.
Just my 0.02c
(Score: 5, Insightful) by Thexalon on Tuesday August 14 2018, @03:54PM
Think of the situation from the point of view with someone with real power. For that person, the ideal election:
1. Appears to be completely legitimate and reflect the will of the people.
2. Guarantees that you (your party, your favorite pet politician, yourself if you are a politician, etc) win.
That both gives you all the appearances needed to say "Yes, I speak for We The People", while at the same time ensuring that you don't have to govern based on what those pesky voters actually want.
A voting system that can easily have the results changed is perfect for this, so long as it doesn't appear to most people like the results actually were changed. There have been hints that such things have happened before, e.g. suspiciously large differences between exit polls and election results in 2004 in a number of states. So far, though, these issues haven't entered the popular zeitgeist to the point where everyone assumes the election is a complete sham like they do in many poorer countries.
The only thing that stops a bad guy with a compiler is a good guy with a compiler.
(Score: 2) by sjames on Wednesday August 15 2018, @12:09AM
It's hard not to see it that way. You get money from the ATM, you get a receipt. You buy gas, you get a receipt. You buy a single glazed donut, you get a receipt. Vote on the leader of the free world for the next 4 years? You get a sticker that says you voted.