3 ms·

> The drawing had to happen on three particular days of each year, two certain days of the week and at a certain time of day. Why do these machine have a conce

by brute 11y ago

> The drawing had to happen on three particular days of each year, two certain days of the week and at a certain time of day. Why do these machine have a concept of time and date in the first place?

noir_lord 11y ago
It mentions DLL injection in the article so it looks like the machine is running Windows. This is one of the downsides of using a commodity OS for absolutely everything, you end up with edge cases where one size fits nobody. Throw in that the people commissioning the systems are not computer scientists and/or applied mathematicians and you end up with this kind of thing. I'm cynical, if I had to design a machine to draw lottery numbers it would look like the old style rolling tumbler machines (which is what we use in the UK for the lottery[1]). If I needed to handle lots and lots of draws I'd keep the physical machines and use computer vision to handle reading the balls with a completely separate system recording the draw as well (so I have an audit trail) EDIT: In fact thinking about it I'd have two CV systems written independently by different organisations/teams with any disagreement halting the draw and raising a flag. Setting it up so that the person who writes the CV code has no access to the physical machine would be straightforward enough and isolating the recording system from the rest as well. Essentially no one person in the loop should have access to all the components otherwise this stuff probably will happen. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/National_Lottery_%28United_Kingdom%29#Machine_appearances https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/National_Lottery_%28United_Kin...
- 21 11y ago
  There is a company which makes ball-tumbler machines for state lotteries. One security feature it has it that each ball has it's unique RFID tag embedded inside, and the machine checks the tag on ball entry, and only allows a ball in if certain conditions are met. And I think that it can use that RFID tag to also read the output (so no CV is needed). Some use a ball set only once, they throw it away after a run and use a new one on each draw, and this RFID mechanism can also enforce that (disallow previously used ids). Even if someone messes with the RFID tags, the (transparent) machine and the output is still visually checked by a commission on each run. Of course, when this information became public knowledge, immediately some conspiracy theory emerged that the RFID tag can be used to allow only "favored" balls to exit the machine as winners (which is not possible, only entry can be disallowed, not exit).
coldtea 11y ago
Because they are what we call computers. It's not some mystery card, it's some PC running an OS.
- teacup50 11y ago
  That's his point. A hardware TRNG's bit stream (plus bias filtering, if necessary) could be wired to flip-flop gates (shift registers) to output lottery numbers, with a component count in the low hundreds at most, no software to compromise, and off-the-shelf, mostly passive commodity components. In short, readily auditable, easily recreated. You could build the system out of parts ordered from multiple manufacturers/OEMs in front of multiple auditors, seal it in place, and never touch it again. You could inspect (destructively and non-destructively) the components directly to verify their implementation. However, we live in a world where the TSA pays hundreds of thousands of dollars for an application that flips a coin, so the fact that state lotteries are using complete operating systems on a standard PC should be unsurprising.
  - coldtea 11y ago
    >In short, readily auditable, easily recreated. You could build the system out of parts ordered from multiple manufacturers/OEMs in front of multiple auditors, seal it in place, and never touch it again. Apparently if "never touch it again" was an option, this wouldn't have happened either. This guy had physical access to the machine. And since that's the case, the hardware you mention wouldn't have helped either.
    - teacup50 10y ago
      It would have been far, far, far, far more difficult to do, and far more difficult to hide. That's the entire point.

by brute 11y ago

> The drawing had to happen on three particular days of each year, two certain days of the week and at a certain time of day. Why do these machine have a concept of time and date in the first place?

noir_lord 11y ago

It mentions DLL injection in the article so it looks like the machine is running Windows. This is one of the downsides of using a commodity OS for absolutely everything, you end up with edge cases where one size fits nobody. Throw in that the people commissioning the systems are not computer scientists and/or applied mathematicians and you end up with this kind of thing. I'm cynical, if I had to design a machine to draw lottery numbers it would look like the old style rolling tumbler machines (which is what we use in the UK for the lottery[1]). If I needed to handle lots and lots of draws I'd keep the physical machines and use computer vision to handle reading the balls with a completely separate system recording the draw as well (so I have an audit trail) EDIT: In fact thinking about it I'd have two CV systems written independently by different organisations/teams with any disagreement halting the draw and raising a flag. Setting it up so that the person who writes the CV code has no access to the physical machine would be straightforward enough and isolating the recording system from the rest as well. Essentially no one person in the loop should have access to all the components otherwise this stuff probably will happen. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/National_Lottery_%28United_Kingdom%29#Machine_appearances https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/National_Lottery_%28United_Kin...

21 11y ago
There is a company which makes ball-tumbler machines for state lotteries. One security feature it has it that each ball has it's unique RFID tag embedded inside, and the machine checks the tag on ball entry, and only allows a ball in if certain conditions are met. And I think that it can use that RFID tag to also read the output (so no CV is needed). Some use a ball set only once, they throw it away after a run and use a new one on each draw, and this RFID mechanism can also enforce that (disallow previously used ids). Even if someone messes with the RFID tags, the (transparent) machine and the output is still visually checked by a commission on each run. Of course, when this information became public knowledge, immediately some conspiracy theory emerged that the RFID tag can be used to allow only "favored" balls to exit the machine as winners (which is not possible, only entry can be disallowed, not exit).

coldtea 11y ago

Because they are what we call computers. It's not some mystery card, it's some PC running an OS.

teacup50 11y ago
That's his point. A hardware TRNG's bit stream (plus bias filtering, if necessary) could be wired to flip-flop gates (shift registers) to output lottery numbers, with a component count in the low hundreds at most, no software to compromise, and off-the-shelf, mostly passive commodity components. In short, readily auditable, easily recreated. You could build the system out of parts ordered from multiple manufacturers/OEMs in front of multiple auditors, seal it in place, and never touch it again. You could inspect (destructively and non-destructively) the components directly to verify their implementation. However, we live in a world where the TSA pays hundreds of thousands of dollars for an application that flips a coin, so the fact that state lotteries are using complete operating systems on a standard PC should be unsurprising.
- coldtea 11y ago
  >In short, readily auditable, easily recreated. You could build the system out of parts ordered from multiple manufacturers/OEMs in front of multiple auditors, seal it in place, and never touch it again. Apparently if "never touch it again" was an option, this wouldn't have happened either. This guy had physical access to the machine. And since that's the case, the hardware you mention wouldn't have helped either.
  - teacup50 10y ago
    It would have been far, far, far, far more difficult to do, and far more difficult to hide. That's the entire point.