India's Electronic Voting machines are Vulnerable to Fraud.!!!

[Brahmos_2]

Contrary to claims by Indian election authorities, the paperless electronic voting systems used in India suffer from significant vulnerabilities. Even brief access to the machines could allow criminals to alter election results

These attacks are neither complicated nor difficult to perform, but they would be hard to detect or defend against. The best way to prevent them is to count votes using paper ballots that voters can see.

 

[Jai_Hind]

The best way to prevent them is to count votes using paper ballots that voters can see.

Even though EVMs maybe hacked or so its reported to be, it is much safer and easier then paper ballots... Not only it saves time of polling and preciding officers, voters and for the people in vote counting facility, it also cannot be tampered easily by any and all and saves a lot of paper too...

 

[axisofevil]

Even though EVMs maybe hacked or so its reported to be, it is much safer and easier then paper ballots... Not only it saves time of polling and preciding officers, voters and for the people in vote counting facility, it also cannot be tampered easily by any and all and saves a lot of paper too...

Not all all safer both scenarios have serious issues.

I pointed this out yrs ago on this forum. Certain Indian idiots shouted that it was foolproof and nothing wrong can happen. I pointed out our tech is shit compared to the West, their research and intel is light yrs ahead. Nobody would listen and tried numerous times to scuttle debate on the thread. Seems like lobbyists or some govt sponsors who were trying to push their agenda on this site and others. You guys got a lot to learn about CONGRESS and BJP.


Everybody conveniently ignores it was an Indian computer scientist who was able to get a hold of a EVM and showed how it could easily be hacked. They charged him and tried to prosecute him to the full extent of the law when he did us all a favor and exposed these MFers. They never prosecute other serious criminals with such haste in all my yrs! Hell, they don;t even act such a way with gang rapists!! That Indian scientist ran away to Canada and had to apply for refugeee status! So, our retarded gov't pushed away a person who had the knowledge to break the EVMs to a foriegn country? Truly smart!


Rahul held on to Amethi by using a handheld device to interfere with the EVM. Rumors but there usually is a grain of truth to such claims.

 

[axisofevil]

Even though EVMs maybe hacked or so its reported to be, it is much safer and easier then paper ballots... Not only it saves time of polling and preciding officers, voters and for the people in vote counting facility, it also cannot be tampered easily by any and all and saves a lot of paper too...

Just read your dumbass reasons why you prefer EVMs? You are so concerned about saving paper and time yet overlook these machines can easily be tampered with. The US to this day only allows very little use and there is still massive objection to it. Why? It is hackable. Anything and everything is hackable. Just because the Indian govt lacks the resources and tech to see that it attainable doesn;t mean it is!

 

[Jai_Hind]

Just read your ******* reasons why you prefer EVMs?

Ofcourse EVMs can be hacked, it is an electronic device, right. All and every electronic devices can be hacked. Supercomputers, flight control systems, mobile phones, you name it. Even defence.pk can be hacked.... But can I hack it- NO... Can you hack it- I dont think so... Maybe a few software engineers in India can hack it, and that is still much better option then the paper ballots which can be tampered with by everyone and all...

 

[axisofevil]

Ofcourse EVMs can be hacked, it is an electronic device, right. All and every electronic devices can be hacked. Supercomputers, flight control systems, mobile phones, you name it. Even defence.pk can be hacked.... But can I hack it- NO... Can you hack it- I dont think so... Maybe a few software engineers in India can hack it, and that is still much better option then the paper ballots which can be tampered with by everyone and all...

Me or you dont have a reason to do so. But foreign gov'ts do! And they will work with those who harbor resentment against us in our own country! I agree paper can be hacked by all but there are measures that can be taken to control it. We just never give ourselves a chance to debate and implement it.

 

[janon]

Me or you dont have a reason to do so. But foreign gov'ts do! And they will work with those who harbor resentment against us in our own country! I agree paper can be hacked by all but there are measures that can be taken to control it. We just never give ourselves a chance to debate and implement it.

Are you aware of the security given to EVMs? From sniffer dogs to commandos? A foreign govt accessing them and then hacking them is a laughable proposition.

 

[Jai_Hind]

Me or you dont have a reason to do so. But foreign gov'ts do! And they will work with those who harbor resentment against us in our own country! I agree paper can be hacked by all but there are measures that can be taken to control it. We just never give ourselves a chance to debate and implement it.

As @janon said, You have to Physically gain access to EVM to tamper with with which is practically almost impossible by unauthorised person... Anyway the same thing can be done to paper ballots

 

[kṣamā]

Though I do agree that all things with a power supply/battery can be hacked, and almost 80% of time a physical Lock-And-Key protection on physical objects beats anything digital hands down. But you also have to remember that "Hacked" term is a very generic and very very broad term.

A 10th grader can run some scripties and make a windows machine show his name on command prompt. He can impress a lot of ppl by that, but from a security/system integrity its just next to nothing, it may be a flag but I wouldn't spent a min breaking my head over it.[Ps: It's just a simple hack where you change the string vals in the binary file of "cmd.exe"]

Where as a well learned security specialist can exploit the "Heart Bleed" bug in OpenSSL library to gain access to the encrypted data and read it . It will scare the heck out of a lot people, and I will definitely spend hours trying to patch it...

Both scenarios are are included in term "Hacked". But you can clearly see the difference. Now these EVMs do not operate at any wireless frequencies, hence a wireless attack or a proximity attack is impossible. An EMF device may completely wipe/destroy the device but cannot selectively modify data. Secondly, it's a well know fact that anything can be hacked into, but no one says How long did it took, How far did they went and What kindaa H/W & S/W it took.

A Simple Googling will show that normal off-the-Shelf encryption can give even a custom build H\W pretty bad time decoding the information [ Assuming they do not know the key and the Clear test data]. We can definitely be sure of one thing that these EVMs will have nothing short of a custom concoction of encryption algorithms and these will burnt into the silicon, not in soft form. Breaking into crypto chips with visualization is a pretty daunting task with a big rig.With present day processing power and power source, breaking in those Cryptos with a handheld device without catching attention, in a brief period of time, is almost laughable.

My two cents... people, you are allowed to discuss it out with me, add to me.

[Edit: That 10th grader was, yours faithfully.....]

 

[egodoc222]

Me or you dont have a reason to do so. But foreign gov'ts do! And they will work with those who harbor resentment against us in our own country! I agree paper can be hacked by all but there are measures that can be taken to control it. We just never give ourselves a chance to debate and implement it.

you r nt that dumb.... are you?
evms are not connected to any network...if you want to hack it...you got do with each one individually....
which is near impossible....considering no.of evms in each constituency...and they are kept in sealed rooms....and breach of it leads to repolling!!!
get your facts right...before starting dumbass thread's
ps: i hope your not of those dumb sulking aap supporter!

 

[axisofevil]

you r nt that dumb.... are you?
evms are not connected to any network...if you want to hack it...you got do with each one individually....
which is near impossible....considering no.of evms in each constituency...and they are kept in sealed rooms....and breach of it leads to repolling!!!
get your facts right...before starting dumbass thread's
ps: i hope your not of those dumb sulking aap supporter!

Dude who said anything about hacking a network? Are you that clueless to think devices cant be built to over ride such scenarios? Its already been proven. Those same EVMs that are kept in sealed rooms was stolen a few yrs back. Plz get your facts right and Im not an AAP supporter...


I hope you're not a blind dumbass Congress supporter....or an RSS ideologue goat

 

[axisofevil]

Are you aware of the security given to EVMs? From sniffer dogs to commandos? A foreign govt accessing them and then hacking them is a laughable proposition.

Tell that to the Indian computer scientist who had one brought to him. Yea thats laughable! You act like ppl are no easy to bribe.

As @janon said, You have to Physically gain access to EVM to tamper with with which is practically almost impossible by unauthorised person... Anyway the same thing can be done to paper ballots

I agree with what you are saying but you overlooking tech and bribery.

Though I do agree that all things with a power supply/battery can be hacked, and almost 80% of time a physical Lock-And-Key protection on physical objects beats anything digital hands down. But you also have to remember that "Hacked" term is a very generic and very very broad term.

A 10th grader can run some scripties and make a windows machine show his name on command prompt. He can impress a lot of ppl by that, but from a security/system integrity its just next to nothing, it may be a flag but I wouldn't spent a min breaking my head over it.[Ps: It's just a simple hack where you change the string vals in the binary file of "cmd.exe"]

Where as a well learned security specialist can exploit the "Heart Bleed" bug in OpenSSL library to gain access to the encrypted data and read it . It will scare the heck out of a lot people, and I will definitely spend hours trying to patch it...

Both scenarios are are included in term "Hacked". But you can clearly see the difference. Now these EVMs do not operate at any wireless frequencies, hence a wireless attack or a proximity attack is impossible. An EMF device may completely wipe/destroy the device but cannot selectively modify data. Secondly, it's a well know fact that anything can be hacked into, but no one says How long did it took, How far did they went and What kindaa H/W & S/W it took.

A Simple Googling will show that normal off-the-Shelf encryption can give even a custom build H\W pretty bad time decoding the information [ Assuming they do not know the key and the Clear test data]. We can definitely be sure of one thing that these EVMs will have nothing short of a custom concoction of encryption algorithms and these will burnt into the silicon, not in soft form. Breaking into crypto chips with visualization is a pretty daunting task with a big rig.With present day processing power and power source, breaking in those Cryptos with a handheld device without catching attention, in a brief period of time, is almost laughable.

My two cents... people, you are allowed to discuss it out with me, add to me.

[Edit: That 10th grader was, yours faithfully.....]

Now imagine what a nation with significant resources and research industries can do

 

[egodoc222]

Dude who said anything about hacking a network? Are you that clueless to think devices cant be built to over ride such scenarios? Its already been proven. Those same EVMs that are kept in sealed rooms was stolen a few yrs back. Plz get your facts right and Im not an AAP supporter...


I hope you're not a blind dumbass Congress supporter....or an RSS ideologue goat

u mean to say all the evms are stolen and reprogrammed???
wat u are nw ashamed to be called as aap supporter...bcos ur party shattered u hopes and managed to attain worst possible results
ps: if u r certain that evms are stolen years ago..or whaterver...
why didnt u post this earlier....??
why now???
i pity u aaptards....ur party let u down
..and made fools out of you...don't get depressed good times are ahead

 

[kṣamā]

Now imagine what a nation with significant resources and research industries can do

To speculate it is easy. The thing is to meaningfully topple a score in a country size of India you need a loooot of boots on ground doing the dirty work. @egodoc222 has already visited the scenario.

No matter what country you are, it boils down to basic mathematics. We can easily assume that these sensitive machines are running a custom flavor of AES or SHA-1 algos. Or something even better. Now the cost of decoding anything with a key size greater than 103 is out of this world [ Source: Google Sheets - create and edit spreadsheets online, for free., Do not tell me its a fanboy creation. Some very serious people came up with this], forget about it if its greater than 256. I am not saying its un crackable, I am saying that cracking it, within a brief period of time, being un tractable while doing so (i,e Doing it without raising suspicion) and doing it to a good nos of EVMs to make a change, is pretty much impossible.

The only way this can be done is if some one breaks into each and every counting booths when these EVM's are present (i,e Last 2 days), plugs each and every or a sizable amount of EVMs to a HyperComputer, Override the inbuilt safe gaurds, Change the poll results, reseal the EVMs , erase all evidence of any wrong, doing this while being undetected by the hordes of security guarding them.And all of the above within a time frame of few hrs. Not to forget the cost penalty the country/organization/individual will face while undertaking this kind of operation. If not Impossible it's improbable .


Edit: 1 more estmation:-

The average cost for electricity in the US is $0.12 per kWh. For a single server I'll use 3741 kWh annually as an estimate. That would be about $450 per year for one machine.

Let's say you can do 1014 decryptions per second. That is 3.15∗1021 decrypts per year for one machine. You need to do (on average) 2255 decryptions in a year, so you would need 22553.15∗1021≈1.84∗1055 machines. To figure your cost you would multiply that by $450 and get about$8∗1057 or 8 octodecillion dollars. World GDP is about 63∗1012, so brute-forcing a 256-bit key would cost about 1044 times the world GDP.

You can follow similar math to get the cost of brute forcing a 128-bit key.

NOTE: I am completely ignoring hardware costs, maintenance, etc. The estimate above is for electricity only. We can take a hint from the NSA on this. You'd be a lot better off hiring a few thousand mathematicians and have them work on breaking the cipher as opposed to trying to brute-force it.

 

[GR!FF!N]

only way one can hack an EVM is by physically tampering the source code(inserting Trojen),EEPROM or connecting an electronic device to the EVM(which Dr. Alex Halderman, a professor of Michigan University showed).none of the technique is applicable as no person can perform it in front of the Election Commission who are in charge of these machines.every electronic machinery can be hacked.but that doesn't mean it is feasible.if someone thinks that one can change microcontroller units of EVM when it is under strict guard of Election Commission(after voting has been done),nothing can be funnier than this.plus,upgraded EVMs have a provision to interface with an Authentication Unit that would allow the manufacturers to verify whether the EVM being used in the election is the same that they have supplied to the Election Commission.