Hack-a-vote: Students Learn How Vulnerable Electronic Voting Really Is

[Wilms]

Hack-a-vote: Students Learn How Vulnerable Electronic Voting Really Is

ScienceDaily

Oct. 8, 2008

snip

(Rice University Associate Professor and Director of Rice's Computer Security Lab Dan) Wallach splits his class into teams. In phase one, the teams pretend to be unscrupulous programmers at a voting machine company. Their task: Make subtle changes to the machines' software -- changes that will alter the election's outcome but that cannot be detected by election officials.

In the second phase of the experiment, the teams are told to play the part of the election's software regulators. Their task is to certify the code submitted by another team in the first phase of the class.

"What we've found is that it's very easy to insert subtle changes to the voting machine," Wallach said. "If someone has access and wants to do damage, it's very straightforward to do it."

snip

Even though students were often able to find the other team's hacked software bugs, Wallach said that in real life it would probably be too late.

"In the real world, voting machines' software is much larger and more complex than the Hack-a-Vote machine we use in class," he said. "We have little reason to believe that the certification and testing process used on genuine voting machines would be able to catch the kind of malice that our students do in class. If this happened in the real world, real votes could be compromised and nobody would know."

snip

http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2008/10/081007102851.htm

[Mnemosyne]

1. Thank you, Wilms, good info, important for the kids to know what they

will be up against.

I appreciate your efforts. :hug:

[Wilms]

3. Here's a guy doing "upgrades".

http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=203x509019

:hi:

[Greyskye]

2. This is a big story that shouldn't get lost on a debate night.

:kick: & R

[Greyskye]

4. .

mid-day :kick:

This is a big story.

[Froward69]

5. Paper trail paper trail

Paper trail,

is the only counter.
thus if your county or precinct does electronic voting with out a paper trail...

use a mail in ballot.

[Wilms]

6. Paper ballots are optically scanned...by a computer.

No less vulnerable even with a paper trail if there are no significant audits. And in most cases, there are no significant audits.

Then there's Riverside County in CA. Mailed in ballots were handed to workers who read them and entered the votes into a touch-screen machine.

Nice.

[newtothegame]

7. Thanks for posting this :)

[Stevepol]

8. Sorry Wilms. I just saw your post, exactly what I just posted. I'll see about withdrawing mine. K&R.