Pentagon e-voting plan 'flawed'
Posted by configure on 23 January 2004 - 08:10 · 11 comments & 1148 views
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(3 replies)
#1 Posted by roadwarrior on 23 Jan 2004 - 11:00
QUOTE They said ballots could be changed in ways which were impossible to detect
Do these people not know anything about MD5 authentication?-
#1.1 Posted by bluebsh on 23 Jan 2004 - 13:49
- do you realize that anything on a computer has a way around it? even the most secure networks with the right amount of time and effort can be violated...
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#1.2 Posted by kussie on 23 Jan 2004 - 15:53
QUOTE (#1.0) Do these people not know anything about MD5 authentication?
MD5 is not quite as secure as you may think. It can easily be hacked by things like brute force attacks and such.
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#2 Posted by SMG on 23 Jan 2004 - 13:15
- Politics + Computers = always 'flawed'
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#3 Posted by noll3095 on 23 Jan 2004 - 13:23
- Shame, I'd actually vote if I could online.
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#4 Posted by redFX on 23 Jan 2004 - 14:20
- There could be too much abuse if it was online. I can picture it now.... candidates hire hackers to sway votes towards them.
If its electronical, its going to be abused. Heck, even paper ballets are hard to keep legit.
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#5 Posted by weenur on 23 Jan 2004 - 14:20
- I hope someone hacks this the first time it comes up. Maybe that'll show the Pentagon that they should listen to all those ignorant professionals. The real problem lies in the fact that if it goes south, nobody is accountable. This kind of thing should be privatized if it is to be done at all.
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#6 Posted by CrimandEvil on 23 Jan 2004 - 15:32
- I would actually stop voting if it goes online, this is the stupidities thing I've ever heard. If you think I'm wrong then go here: Black Box voting.
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#7 Posted by Grappa on 23 Jan 2004 - 17:02
- It looks like accountability in this country is becoming a foreign word... nobody in the government seems too concerned with being able to validate voting. But that's no surprise when you look at what happened in the last Presidential election...
G
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#8 Posted by Cheese Whiz on 23 Jan 2004 - 17:36
- There should be a manner by which the military & others who are overseas can vote effectively. If it means using an electronic system for the expats, so be it.
For the rest of us, however, excercising the right to vote should be a deliberate act & not one of convenience. You *should* have to get up off the couch, go to a polling location, register, and cast you ballot.
To paraphrase Einstein, voting should be made as simple as possible, but not simpler.
#3's comment is disappointing.
Four computer experts who reviewed the pilot project said the risks of online voting could not be eliminated.
"It has numerous other fundamental security problems that leave it vulnerable to a variety of well-known cyber attacks," said the report.
The Pentagon is standing by the system, which could be used in November's presidential elections. The project is part of the Pentagon's Federal Voting Assistance Program, which was set up in 1986 to help military personnel stationed abroad to to vote.
Net experiment
Internet voting is widely seen as a way of encouraging more people to vote and pilot projects are already under way in countries such as the UK. In the US, some seven states are trying out the Secure Electronic Registration and Voting Experiment, (Serve), system. It is expected to be first tested at the beginning of February in South Carolina's primary election.
But the report by the four experts has cast a shadow over the move towards electronic voting. It was put together by Aviel Rubin of the Johns Hopkins University, David Wagner of the University of California at Berkeley, David Jefferson of the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory and independent consultant Barbara Simons.
They were among 10 computer security experts approached by the military to study its net voting system and look for vulnerabilities.
Skewed ballots
The findings of the four experts make uncomfortable reading for the Pentagon.
They concluded that internet voting offered far too many opportunities for hackers or even terrorists to interfere with fair and accurate voting. They said ballots could be changed in ways which were impossible to detect, potential skewing the result in close contests. More damaging, the experts questioned the whole premise of using the internet in the voting process.
"The flaws are unsolvable because they are fundamental to the architecture of the internet," says Dr Wagner.
"Using a voting system based upon the internet poses a serious and unacceptable risk for election fraud.
"It is simply not secure enough for something as serious as the election of a government official."
The report recommends that the Serve project be shut down and nothing like it be tried until "both the internet and the world's home computer infrastructure have been fundamentally redesigned, or some other unforeseen security breakthroughs appear."
Despite the criticisms, the Pentagon is standing by the project.
"We knew from the start that security would be the utmost concern," said Defense Department spokesman Glenn Flood.
"We've had things put in place that counteract the things they talked about."