News for hackers. Stuff that matters.

A comment on Voting Machine Used in Half of U.S. Is Vulnerable to Attack, Report Finds. Parent comment

Re:Voting Machine Used in Half of U.S. Is Vulnerable to Atta... by rohit2412 on Friday September 28, 2018 @12:27PM (#18094660)
Lot of generalizations and stupid assumptions in that video, like where he argues that of course the ballots will be uploaded over the internet without any authentication/checksum.

I don't see why a digital counting machine which is kept completely offline and is transported physically cannot be used, specially if we can verify it's counting functions by randomly verifying a few of those machines (also keep paper ballots, just use the machine to count ballots), or statistics, and use an external randomization/derandomization module.

[ Parent | on HN ]
Re:Voting Machine Used in Half of U.S. Is Vulnerable to Atta... by mdorazio on Friday September 28, 2018 @12:32PM (#18094687)
Hang on. You want to use a counting machine, and then physically transport it around to avoid security issues instead of just using proven human counters and physically transported ballots because....???? Why? Just why? What problem is this solving? Does getting your results a few hours sooner make a single bit of difference to merit this madness?
[ Parent | on HN ]
Re:Voting Machine Used in Half of U.S. Is Vulnerable to Atta... by rohit2412 on Saturday September 29, 2018 @04:01PM (#18102469)
Because paper ballots are easily subverted. In my country (India) it was not uncommon to have goons take up a polling booth and slid hundreds of fake ballots in, or throw in ink in the ballot box. Digital counters stop such attacks.
[ Parent | on HN ]
Re:Voting Machine Used in Half of U.S. Is Vulnerable to Atta... by hvdhh7 on Friday September 28, 2018 @01:15PM (#18095058)
Perhaps because counting tens of thousands of near-identical pieces of paper is exactly the sort of repetitive, robotic task we've entrusted machines to perform more accurately than humans since at least the 1940s.
[ Parent | on HN ]
Re:Voting Machine Used in Half of U.S. Is Vulnerable to Atta... by monocasa on Friday September 28, 2018 @03:14PM (#18096190)
You realize that the article in question is about hacks against vote tabulating machines right?
[ Parent | on HN ]
Re:Voting Machine Used in Half of U.S. Is Vulnerable to Atta... by hvdhh7 on Friday September 28, 2018 @03:45PM (#18096445)
I do.

But a non-hacked vote tabulating machine will still do the job better than non-hacked humans.

Add a high enough percentage of random hand audits of the machine but counts to ensure they're functioning correctly, and you should get a reasonably high confidence that you have the most accurate count.

[ Parent | on HN ]
Re:Voting Machine Used in Half of U.S. Is Vulnerable to Atta... by moviuro on Friday September 28, 2018 @03:50PM (#18096473)
> Add a high enough percentage of random hand audits of the machine but counts to ensure they're functioning correctly, and you should get a reasonably high confidence that you have the most accurate count.

Defies the purpose of electronic machines completely. Why use machines + lots of auditors, when just more counters (worth less than auditors) could do the same job, with a much higher cost to corrupt?...

[ Parent | on HN ]
Re:Voting Machine Used in Half of U.S. Is Vulnerable to Atta... by monocasa on Friday September 28, 2018 @03:47PM (#18096450)
But why? The number of humans to count votes scales linearly with the number of votes cast.
[ Parent | on HN ]
Re:Voting Machine Used in Half of U.S. Is Vulnerable to Atta... by moviuro on Friday September 28, 2018 @03:00PM (#18096077)
> over the internet without any authentication/checksum

As if the totally secure communications over Internet problem had been solved. Why are we seeing SO MANY issues with TLS, VPNs, hardcoded root passwords everywhere, ssh issues even!...

[ Parent | on HN ]
Re:Voting Machine Used in Half of U.S. Is Vulnerable to Atta... by rohit2412 on Saturday September 29, 2018 @04:04PM (#18102487)
I am advocating a glorified digital calculator with printed out ballot copies. What's called VVPAT. Not online voting.
[ Parent | on HN ]