Brazil E-Voting Machines Not Hacked... But Van Eck Phreaking Allowed Hacker To Record Votes
from the there's-an-issue-there dept
Last week, we noted that an attempt to let hackers crack e-voting machines in Brazil failed, but Slashdot points out that someone did use some Van Eck phreaking to figure out who people voted for. While that's not quite the same as hacking the results of an election, it could lead to questions about privacy and how anonymous voting really is. Of course, to some extent, this has always been a risk with e-voting systems, but it hasn't received that much attention.
Thank you for reading this Techdirt post. With so many things competing for everyone’s attention these days, we really appreciate you giving us your time. We work hard every day to put quality content out there for our community.
Techdirt is one of the few remaining truly independent media outlets. We do not have a giant corporation behind us, and we rely heavily on our community to support us, in an age when advertisers are increasingly uninterested in sponsoring small, independent sites — especially a site like ours that is unwilling to pull punches in its reporting and analysis.
While other websites have resorted to paywalls, registration requirements, and increasingly annoying/intrusive advertising, we have always kept Techdirt open and available to anyone. But in order to continue doing so, we need your support. We offer a variety of ways for our readers to support us, from direct donations to special subscriptions and cool merchandise — and every little bit helps. Thank you.
–The Techdirt Team
Reader Comments
Subscribe: RSS
View by: Time | Thread
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
Re:
Actually, that suggests another weakness. You might be able to EMP the system.
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
Re: Re:
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
Re:
As you admitted, your knowledge is somewhat lacking in this area. It all depends on what you call "fairly close" and how good your equipment is. We can receive weak signals from small spacecraft out past the edge of the solar system.
Shouldn't preventing individuals with monitoring devices from loitering around the voting area eliminate this problem?
What are you going to do, strip search everyone in the area?
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
Re: Not Still A Serious Threat?
Cyanid Pontifex wrote:
Well, nobody told James Clerk Maxwell that his equations no longer apply.
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
explanation
B) use massive 1 million person botnet as a super computing crack machine for HACKING said data.
C) return in 2 days for what said data was.
D) BE STUPID AND USE SAID TECH THIS WAY.
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
And?
Voting privacy has never been and can never be guaranteed.
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
The best evote system? A screen that helps you make your selections, and then prints out your finished ballot. You then take your printed ballot to another machine, where it is stored (secured) and then counted ONLY at the end of the voting period (not on the run).
The machine that helps you vote doesn't record your choices. Every print is also an erase. End of problem. Now you have printed ballots for recounts, no loss of data because of machine failures, and no real way to hack the system on the fly (because the voter can recheck their printed ballot before submitting it). The machines don't have to be network connected in any manner.
Too much technology is the problem.
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
trivial coincidence
off topic: pop-ups on Techdirt? Is that new?
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
Point your big ass radio telescope towards the voting machine, will ya?
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
Re:
Point your big ass radio telescope towards the voting machine, will ya?
Not needed. I think you lack a sense of the scale of comparative magnitudes involved.
Voyager 1 is currently almost 10 billion miles from earth and we can still receive it on the 70-meter Deep Space Station at Goldstone, California. Now compare that to the distance of a van parked a tenth of a mile from a polling place. That's a factor of about 100 BILLION. Now, doing *a lot* of simplification just for ballpark numbers, how big is an antenna that's 70 meters divided by 100 billion in diameter? Hint: it's way too small for you to see with the naked eye. Think that's too big? Still ROTFL?
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
So it's all about diameters, right? ROTFL even harder.
Now stop bragging and theorising and prove it. A link to The Onion will do. In the meantime start here
http://wps.prenhall.com/esm_chaisson_BG4/10/2716/695393.cw/index.html
and get help here
http://setiathome.berkeley.edu/forum_forum.php?id=9
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
Re:
Not at all, and that was the whole the point I was making. You, however, were the one trying to pretend that it would require a very large antenna (or "big ass radio telescope" as you put it) and now that your ignorance has been exposed you're trying to pretend otherwise. Keep on laughing, the joke is on you.
Now stop bragging
Umm, bragging? About what?
and theorising and prove it. A link to The Onion will do. In the meantime start here
One of things we electrical engineers do is rely on theory. If you'd like to post some links to some reliable engineering sources to support your contention that receiving the electromagnetic emanations from the machines involved would require radio telescopes, then go ahead. I'm not holding my breath on that one though.
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
Improvement?
Considering that the current systems seem to have a problem with this basic requirement, maybe this should be seen as an improvement rather than a problem.
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
Van Eck
We would like to contact an expert in computer science and technology for an assessment over vulnerability of electronic voting due to the Van Eck Phreaking, or other phenomenon that could possibly affect, interfere or allow to monitor an activity wish secrecy is protected by law.
We will highly appreciate any contact information sent to the following address.
vicbang13@hotmail.com
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
Van Eck
We would like to contact an expert in computer science and technology for an assessment over vulnerability of electronic voting due to the Van Eck Phreaking, or other phenomenon that could possibly affect, interfere or allow to monitor an activity wish secrecy is protected by law.
We will highly appreciate any contact information sent to the following address.
vicbang13@hotmail.com
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
Aftermarket Comments
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
EVM
Electronic Voting Machine will be not rigged.
It is simple and easy.
Read this article about EVM
https://rajpariwar.com/wp/electronic-voting-machine-in-pakistan/
[ link to this | view in chronology ]