Contest To Hack Brazilian Voting Machines 101
An anonymous reader writes "Brazilian elections went electronic many years ago, with very fast results but a few complaints from losers, of course. Next month, 10 teams that accepted the challenge will have access to hardware and software (Google translation; original in Portuguese) for the amount of time they requested (from one hour to four days). Some will try to break the vote's secrecy and some will try to throw in malicious code to change the entered votes without leaving traces."
why is electronic voting so hard? (Score:3, Interesting)
transport the results out of the voting location with the votes and hashs seperately and count then use the hash to verify that the count wasn't tampered with in transit etc.
Re:Why is electronic voting so "popular"? (Score:1, Interesting)
I have a solution for all those problems. If you can't operate a ballot, punch out a chad, or understand a touch screen, FUCK OFF. I don't want to know what you voted for, because you are an incompetent moron. The best argument against democracy is a 5 minute conversation with the average voter.
The bottom line is simple. Creating a perfect electronic voting system is TRIVIAL. The only reason it hasn't been done is because it doesn't benefit any of the people who could make it happen. In a world where trillions of dollars are traded around electronically every day, there is no logical excuse to not be able to build an electronic voting machine that is both simple and secure. For that matter, it could be done with phone/internet systems too. The only limitation is political. Not technical.
Hacking an election: easier than it sounds (Score:3, Interesting)
A lot of people seem to believe that hacking an election that uses electronic voting machines is so hard it's the stuff of science fiction.
However some time ago I came across an article [ieee.org] describing how an unknown group hacked the Vodafone-Panafon cell-phone system. To me this hack conclusively proves that these groups have the technical and financial resources necessary to steal an electronic voting election.
Consider: