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Edward Snowden Demonstrates How Easy It Is to Hack a Voting Machine

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Re: Edward Snowden Demonstrates How Easy It Is to Hack a Voting Machine

#131

Post by rbanffy »

Zombieball wrote: post #112
extra88 wrote: post #55

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Voter coercion is something to be concerned about but the scenario you describe won't keep me up at night. The number one problem is it's hard to scale up to a level that would actually sway an election. It only takes one hero to call the police while they're at the polling station or after their family is released and the sequence is broken. There's no need for the victim to actually submit the pre-filled ballot, th…

> How would an electronic voting machine improve upon this? I am just theorizing here: Someone now takes the box of paper votes and runs it through the scanner machine. And passes this number along to someone. What is stopping them from tampering at this step? I think this is precisely what my co-worker was describing. There is an inherent trust that your paper ballot is scanned and recorded in a fashion that matches…

I worked on the 2002 model. It stored the signed voting data on a removable CF card which was under a tamper proof seal. After installation the machines were kept physically secure and, during the election they are never under the supervision of a single person. After the election the machines are returned to local elections authorities (if they are too late, they are invalidated) where the memory card is read and totalized.

We designed a vote printer that would allow the voter to see a paper copy before storing it, but it was never used.

Re: Edward Snowden Demonstrates How Easy It Is to Hack a Voting Machine

#132

Post by Natsu »

grzm wrote: post #37

Looks like we're about to have the same voting/election discussion we've had at least 5 times over the past month or so. If anyone's interested in reading what's already been discussed, here are links to the previous threads: "American Elections Will Be Hacked" https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12921967 "Maryland will audit all votes cast in general election" https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12885396 "Cylance…

This has come up in many of the related threads -

"Demographics, Not Hacking, Explain The Election Results"

http://fivethirtyeight.com/features/demographics-not-hacking...

That aside, we should, of course, work on securing the vote.

Re: Edward Snowden Demonstrates How Easy It Is to Hack a Voting Machine

#134

Post by devdoomari »

cwisecarver wrote: post #107
Procrastes wrote: post #6

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Hi Hacker_9. In Texas, where I vote, the machines don't even print paper. We just have to trust that the machine correctly recorded our vote. The reasons for the machines are, 1. cost cutting over manual counts, 2. profiteering by well connected companies, 3. And potentially making sure only the "right" votes count, although that part isn't proven. In California we were able to vote at home with a mail-in, paper ball…

If we have to use machines why wouldn't we just source two machines from rival vendors. One machine takes the vote from the voter through whatever method, records the vote and prints a receipt that clearly states that voters choices. Machine two reads the receipt in front of the voter and keeps a second tally of votes. The two tallies are then compared at the end of the night.

this with some crypto-sauce would be mixnet voting :)

Re: Edward Snowden Demonstrates How Easy It Is to Hack a Voting Machine

#135

Post by Retric »

rbanffy wrote: post #128
sandworm101 wrote: post #123

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>>> ... but how you will distinguish fake votes from real ones? Easy. Serial numbers. Like any other anonymous system (paper money, raffle tickets etc) you assign a number to every valid ballot. Should the same number appear twice, or not appear, then you know something fishy is happening. Any extra fake ballots should be discovered, so long as the originals are not removed from the systems. Throw the numbers around…

The order has to be random or you can trace votes to individuals if you keep the order in which they voted.

Most systems seem to have two lines so it's not clear the order people voted in. Excluding hidden cameras which also work with voting machines.

Re: Edward Snowden Demonstrates How Easy It Is to Hack a Voting Machine

#136

Post by grzm »

Natsu wrote: post #132
grzm wrote: post #37

Looks like we're about to have the same voting/election discussion we've had at least 5 times over the past month or so. If anyone's interested in reading what's already been discussed, here are links to the previous threads: "American Elections Will Be Hacked" https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12921967 "Maryland will audit all votes cast in general election" https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12885396 "Cylance…

This has come up in many of the related threads - "Demographics, Not Hacking, Explain The Election Results" http://fivethirtyeight.com/features/demographics-not-hacking... That aside, we should, of course, work on securing the vote.

Oh, definitely. I don't mean to imply anything about hacking wrt this election. (Did I?) Frankly I generally don't go down those rabbit holes too far because securing the vote is motivated by ensuring a trusted process, rather than any particular rumor or incident. I'm happy to leave the investigations for incidents to others. They're important as well, I just don't have skin thick enough to handle the partisanship.

I added these links here because the same points get hashed and rehashed in every thread, rather than building on the work that's already been done and figuring out what the next steps should be. (I admit that rehashing is a pet peeve of mine.)

As you note, securing the vote is important. A secure vote and trust in the election process is very important to a democracy, and something that continues to come up for a variety of reasons, and something that can easily be supported by anyone interested in democracy, regardless of party affiliation or political persuasion.

Re: Edward Snowden Demonstrates How Easy It Is to Hack a Voting Machine

#137

Post by sveiss »

rbanffy wrote: post #128
sandworm101 wrote: post #123

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>>> ... but how you will distinguish fake votes from real ones? Easy. Serial numbers. Like any other anonymous system (paper money, raffle tickets etc) you assign a number to every valid ballot. Should the same number appear twice, or not appear, then you know something fishy is happening. Any extra fake ballots should be discovered, so long as the originals are not removed from the systems. Throw the numbers around…

The order has to be random or you can trace votes to individuals if you keep the order in which they voted.

In some voting systems (eg, the UK's), this is a feature, not a bug. Ballot serials are recorded against electoral register entries, and the courts have de-anonymized ballots in a few cases.

Re: Edward Snowden Demonstrates How Easy It Is to Hack a Voting Machine

#138

Post by lisivka »

naasking wrote: post #125
lisivka wrote: post #86

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yep, you can recount fake paper votes, but how you will distinguish fake votes from real ones? Remember, votes are anonymous, so you cannot track vote back to live being to ask. And even if you will be able to do so, live being can lie you about his vote, to protect himself, or just to not look dumb in eyes of others.

> Yep, you can recount fake paper votes, but how you will distinguish fake votes from real ones? You already have a log of who showed up to vote. Compare the number of shows S with the number of ballots V which must be Edit: and this all statistically correlates with exit polls. It's very, very hard to fake all three of these in order to rig an election.

So yes, you have log, you have votes. How to distinguish real votes from fake ones? State can start election again from scratch, when it will find a problem, but people will vote very differently at this next election, because whole story will affect their minds and votes. Brave fakers can raise stakes and win.

Re: Edward Snowden Demonstrates How Easy It Is to Hack a Voting Machine

#139

Post by ThomPete »

naasking wrote: post #127
ThomPete wrote: post #35

This is missing the point though. The american voting system is actually very secure. It's highly decentralized, machines are not connected to the internet, implemented in many different ways, which means that they would have to do many attacks many different places without being discovered to even have an effect. 75% of them have paper trails which would require an even bigger achievement to change enough off as it'…

> It's highly decentralized, machines are not connected to the internet, implemented in many different ways, which means that they would have to do many attacks many different places without being discovered to even have an effect. Or modify the program loaded on the machines before they're distributed. It's probably easier than you think.

No cause they dont even use the same.

Re: Edward Snowden Demonstrates How Easy It Is to Hack a Voting Machine

#140

Post by lisivka »

labster wrote: post #124
lisivka wrote: post #86

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yep, you can recount fake paper votes, but how you will distinguish fake votes from real ones? Remember, votes are anonymous, so you cannot track vote back to live being to ask. And even if you will be able to do so, live being can lie you about his vote, to protect himself, or just to not look dumb in eyes of others.

Explain "fake paper votes". I'm not sure that this is a real problem with normal auditing -- record all voters that come into a precinct, what time they appear, and compare to the number of received ballots. Comparing signatures of voters to the file signature is common for absentee voting. It's just far harder and riskier to mess around with compromising paper ballots than a mistake (or "mistake") in a line of code.

You cannot force voters to come in and confirm that they sold their votes for exchange of money. They will lie. You must catch fakers, which is tricky when they have chance to win election and punish you, like Stalin did.
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