8 ms·

Soon all the voting machines in U.S. will be powered by FreeBSD/RISC-V

67 points by cnst 7y ago

cnst 7y ago
A FreeBSD.org confirmation below; note the sponsored-by part: * https://www.freebsd.org/news/status/report-2019-01-2019-03.html#FreeBSD/RISC-V-Update https://www.freebsd.org/news/status/report-2019-01-2019-03.h...
shmerl 7y ago
What were they running on until now?
- jerkstate 7y ago
  Windows 7 from https://apnews.com/e5e070c31f3c497fa9e6875f426ccde1 https://apnews.com/e5e070c31f3c497fa9e6875f426ccde1 > An Associated Press analysis has found that like many counties in Pennsylvania, the vast majority of 10,000 election jurisdictions nationwide use Windows 7 or an older operating system to create ballots, program voting machines, tally votes and report counts.
  - deelowe 7y ago
    Definitely not windows 7 in my town. Looks more like 2k.
    - lxhmj 7y ago
      Might have been 7 with the classic theme? It looks basically like 2000
mrpippy 7y ago
I'd love to see this happen, but the realist side of me would bet money that no American will cast a vote on a FreeBSD/RISC-V machine in the next 5 years.
- solarkraft 7y ago
  The idealist in me hopes that no american will cast a vote on a FreeBSD/RISC-V or any other voting machine in 5 years.
ENOTTY 7y ago
DARPA doesn't have any regulatory power over how elections are run in the United States. So as of right now this tweet is wishful thinking.
- cryptoz 7y ago
  The way it is presented on HN is active disinformation. The headline is simply false.
- throwaway2048 7y ago
  Sadly, even the federal government has very little power over this, it will be a battle state by state to force corrupt incumbents like Diebold out.
zokula 7y ago
If it's powered by FreeBSD then the Russians are going to have a field day hacking U.S. voting machines, as FreeBSD has more holes than Swiss cheese. That its being built on top of Risc-V doesn't Inspire confidence either
- 0xdeadb00f 7y ago
  I agree. But do you think FreeBSD will be much worse than the Windows 7 they have been previously using? I assume they will harden FreeBSD as much as they can (hopefully). Also, what *is" a more appropriate OS to use on these systems? OpenBSD? Linux?
  - BoiledCabbage 7y ago
    Why not fix the problem and go to paper? Budget more workers and do it the right way.
jakeogh 7y ago
Hand counted paper has less unfixable fundamental flaws.
redis_mlc 7y ago
I just wanted to point out something about US voting machines for seriously interested people to research and ponder. From what I've read, the sole motivation for the large "investment" in electronic voting machines was an ADA requirement. City and state government committees felt obligated to budget for electronic voting machines for compliance reasons only. So ADA compliance was the sole requirement, and the security requirements were never a factor. This is similar to Dieselgate in Europe. Diesel is a filthy fuel, but there is one pollution component, I believe it's CO2, that is emitted less than gasoline. All of the other pollutants are worse, but European governments incentived diesel ICE engines for that one molecule. We are in a post-facts era, and as technologists we need to be at the table before one-dimensional public policies are made, as in the above examples.
- addicted 7y ago
  Wasn’t dieselgate about companies rigging their software to trigger emissions control only during testing to meet NOx standards? And wasn’t dieselgate about trying to trick US standards rather than about European standards? The irony of your comment... Edit: I don’t know anything about the impact of the ADA on the choice of EVMs in the US, so I haven’t commented on it too much, but even ignoring how wrong your dieselgate comment is, your claim about ADA doesn’t pass the smell test for me because EVMs are (or were, until courts stopped them or countries realized how insecure they are) being adopted in large numbers in other countries, many of which don’t have the equivalent of ADA laws, and don’t particularly care about the disabled.
  - redis_mlc 7y ago
    No irony, you just don't understand the complete picture. I wasn't offering my opinions, I was reporting on what the press had previously written. Most press on dieselgate was superficial, but there were a few articles that went deeper into why diesel and why mfgs. rigged exhaust tests. The actual origin of dieselgate was government regulations incentivizing diesel use in Europe for misguided emissions reasons. A related factor is that mfgs. can apply fuel economy improvements from one model to other models based on percentage. Regarding voting machines, city and state councils would not budget for new equipment without a good reason. That's why ADA seems like the most compelling reason from what I've read. Under "Voting Systems Standards" in the link below, an electronic system is required with multiple language support under ADA: https://www.govinfo.gov/content/pkg/PLAW-107publ252/pdf/PLAW-107publ252.pdf https://www.govinfo.gov/content/pkg/PLAW-107publ252/pdf/PLAW...
fsh 7y ago
This whole "open source voting machine" idea completely misses the point why electronic voting is a bad idea in the first place. The obvious attack against such a system is to secretly use different software or hardware in the machines than was published and audited. For the voter it is impossible to know which software or hardware the black box in the voting booth actually runs, and even for experts it can be made arbitrarily hard to detect. Furthermore, it should be possible for the average voter to understand the whole election process. I don't think that any single person, let alone the average voter, can understand and audit a complex FreeBSD/RISC-V computer.
- drusepth 7y ago
  Honest question: how is <secretly using different software or hardware in the machine> different from <someone secretly switching or altering ballots> in our current system? If we can't trust checks and balances saying, "Your vote will be counted properly here", how do we trust any of it?
  - jakeogh 7y ago
    One requires drastically more joules and seconds.
  - lwansbrough 7y ago
    The process you described would require a group of humans to conspire together and carry out voter fraud. Which is not only illegal (and thus carries high risk on an individual level), but probably difficult to pull off without anyone finding out about it. Compare that to totally opaque code running on a system only a very few select people will ever get to observe. Not only that, the average person may not even be able to spot malicious code even if they were given the opportunity to stare right at it. It would be pretty hard not to notice someone dumping ballots or stuffing ballot boxes if you were observing a counting room, even with no prior knowledge of the process.
    - StudentStuff 7y ago
      The sheer volume of fraudulent paper ballots needed, combined with manual partial counts to ensure automated scanner accuracy has ensured the security of paper based voting compared to alternatives.
danso 7y ago
U.S. voting is extremely decentralized [0], with the procurement of machines procured at the state or even the county level. This mention of "U.S. Government Furnished Equipment" sounds like FUD. [0] http://www.ncsl.org/research/elections-and-campaigns/election-administration-at-state-and-local-levels.aspx http://www.ncsl.org/research/elections-and-campaigns/electio... edit: The user's bio says he's on the "DARPA CHERI" team, which is in Cambridge? [0]
- cnst 7y ago
  Yeah, DARPA funded OpenBSD development in Canada in the past, so, not much surprise that they also fund research at the University of Cambridge, I guess. https://www.cl.cam.ac.uk/research/security/ctsrd/cheri/ https://www.cl.cam.ac.uk/research/security/ctsrd/cheri/ The web-page itself makes no mentions of DARPA or AFRL, but if you click on any of the papers, the notices are all there. P.S. ARM is HQ'ed in Cambridge, so, location-wise, probably a lot of talent that can do these kinds of things there.
ravenstine 7y ago
Why don't voting machines have their own specialized operating system? There's no need for all the extra baggage that comes with a general purpose operating system since all voting machines do the same stuff. I would think that, even if the source code was leaked, there'd be fewer vulnerabilities for the hacker to take advantage of.
- eeZah7Ux 7y ago
  Nonsense.
solarkraft 7y ago
I like this video by Tom Scott explaining why electronic voting is a terrible idea. https://youtu.be/w3_0x6oaDmI https://youtu.be/w3_0x6oaDmI

67 points by cnst 7y ago

cnst 7y ago

A FreeBSD.org confirmation below; note the sponsored-by part: * https://www.freebsd.org/news/status/report-2019-01-2019-03.html#FreeBSD/RISC-V-Update https://www.freebsd.org/news/status/report-2019-01-2019-03.h...

shmerl 7y ago

What were they running on until now?

jerkstate 7y ago
Windows 7 from https://apnews.com/e5e070c31f3c497fa9e6875f426ccde1 https://apnews.com/e5e070c31f3c497fa9e6875f426ccde1 > An Associated Press analysis has found that like many counties in Pennsylvania, the vast majority of 10,000 election jurisdictions nationwide use Windows 7 or an older operating system to create ballots, program voting machines, tally votes and report counts.
- deelowe 7y ago
  Definitely not windows 7 in my town. Looks more like 2k.
  - lxhmj 7y ago
    Might have been 7 with the classic theme? It looks basically like 2000

mrpippy 7y ago

I'd love to see this happen, but the realist side of me would bet money that no American will cast a vote on a FreeBSD/RISC-V machine in the next 5 years.

solarkraft 7y ago
The idealist in me hopes that no american will cast a vote on a FreeBSD/RISC-V or any other voting machine in 5 years.

ENOTTY 7y ago

DARPA doesn't have any regulatory power over how elections are run in the United States. So as of right now this tweet is wishful thinking.

cryptoz 7y ago
The way it is presented on HN is active disinformation. The headline is simply false.
throwaway2048 7y ago
Sadly, even the federal government has very little power over this, it will be a battle state by state to force corrupt incumbents like Diebold out.

zokula 7y ago

If it's powered by FreeBSD then the Russians are going to have a field day hacking U.S. voting machines, as FreeBSD has more holes than Swiss cheese. That its being built on top of Risc-V doesn't Inspire confidence either

0xdeadb00f 7y ago
I agree. But do you think FreeBSD will be much worse than the Windows 7 they have been previously using? I assume they will harden FreeBSD as much as they can (hopefully). Also, what *is" a more appropriate OS to use on these systems? OpenBSD? Linux?
- BoiledCabbage 7y ago
  Why not fix the problem and go to paper? Budget more workers and do it the right way.

jakeogh 7y ago

Hand counted paper has less unfixable fundamental flaws.

redis_mlc 7y ago

I just wanted to point out something about US voting machines for seriously interested people to research and ponder. From what I've read, the sole motivation for the large "investment" in electronic voting machines was an ADA requirement. City and state government committees felt obligated to budget for electronic voting machines for compliance reasons only. So ADA compliance was the sole requirement, and the security requirements were never a factor. This is similar to Dieselgate in Europe. Diesel is a filthy fuel, but there is one pollution component, I believe it's CO2, that is emitted less than gasoline. All of the other pollutants are worse, but European governments incentived diesel ICE engines for that one molecule. We are in a post-facts era, and as technologists we need to be at the table before one-dimensional public policies are made, as in the above examples.

addicted 7y ago
Wasn’t dieselgate about companies rigging their software to trigger emissions control only during testing to meet NOx standards? And wasn’t dieselgate about trying to trick US standards rather than about European standards? The irony of your comment... Edit: I don’t know anything about the impact of the ADA on the choice of EVMs in the US, so I haven’t commented on it too much, but even ignoring how wrong your dieselgate comment is, your claim about ADA doesn’t pass the smell test for me because EVMs are (or were, until courts stopped them or countries realized how insecure they are) being adopted in large numbers in other countries, many of which don’t have the equivalent of ADA laws, and don’t particularly care about the disabled.
- redis_mlc 7y ago
  No irony, you just don't understand the complete picture. I wasn't offering my opinions, I was reporting on what the press had previously written. Most press on dieselgate was superficial, but there were a few articles that went deeper into why diesel and why mfgs. rigged exhaust tests. The actual origin of dieselgate was government regulations incentivizing diesel use in Europe for misguided emissions reasons. A related factor is that mfgs. can apply fuel economy improvements from one model to other models based on percentage. Regarding voting machines, city and state councils would not budget for new equipment without a good reason. That's why ADA seems like the most compelling reason from what I've read. Under "Voting Systems Standards" in the link below, an electronic system is required with multiple language support under ADA: https://www.govinfo.gov/content/pkg/PLAW-107publ252/pdf/PLAW-107publ252.pdf https://www.govinfo.gov/content/pkg/PLAW-107publ252/pdf/PLAW...

fsh 7y ago

This whole "open source voting machine" idea completely misses the point why electronic voting is a bad idea in the first place. The obvious attack against such a system is to secretly use different software or hardware in the machines than was published and audited. For the voter it is impossible to know which software or hardware the black box in the voting booth actually runs, and even for experts it can be made arbitrarily hard to detect. Furthermore, it should be possible for the average voter to understand the whole election process. I don't think that any single person, let alone the average voter, can understand and audit a complex FreeBSD/RISC-V computer.

drusepth 7y ago
Honest question: how is <secretly using different software or hardware in the machine> different from <someone secretly switching or altering ballots> in our current system? If we can't trust checks and balances saying, "Your vote will be counted properly here", how do we trust any of it?
- jakeogh 7y ago
  One requires drastically more joules and seconds.
- lwansbrough 7y ago
  The process you described would require a group of humans to conspire together and carry out voter fraud. Which is not only illegal (and thus carries high risk on an individual level), but probably difficult to pull off without anyone finding out about it. Compare that to totally opaque code running on a system only a very few select people will ever get to observe. Not only that, the average person may not even be able to spot malicious code even if they were given the opportunity to stare right at it. It would be pretty hard not to notice someone dumping ballots or stuffing ballot boxes if you were observing a counting room, even with no prior knowledge of the process.
  - StudentStuff 7y ago
    The sheer volume of fraudulent paper ballots needed, combined with manual partial counts to ensure automated scanner accuracy has ensured the security of paper based voting compared to alternatives.

danso 7y ago

U.S. voting is extremely decentralized [0], with the procurement of machines procured at the state or even the county level. This mention of "U.S. Government Furnished Equipment" sounds like FUD. [0] http://www.ncsl.org/research/elections-and-campaigns/election-administration-at-state-and-local-levels.aspx http://www.ncsl.org/research/elections-and-campaigns/electio... edit: The user's bio says he's on the "DARPA CHERI" team, which is in Cambridge? [0]

cnst 7y ago
Yeah, DARPA funded OpenBSD development in Canada in the past, so, not much surprise that they also fund research at the University of Cambridge, I guess. https://www.cl.cam.ac.uk/research/security/ctsrd/cheri/ https://www.cl.cam.ac.uk/research/security/ctsrd/cheri/ The web-page itself makes no mentions of DARPA or AFRL, but if you click on any of the papers, the notices are all there. P.S. ARM is HQ'ed in Cambridge, so, location-wise, probably a lot of talent that can do these kinds of things there.

ravenstine 7y ago

Why don't voting machines have their own specialized operating system? There's no need for all the extra baggage that comes with a general purpose operating system since all voting machines do the same stuff. I would think that, even if the source code was leaked, there'd be fewer vulnerabilities for the hacker to take advantage of.

eeZah7Ux 7y ago
Nonsense.

solarkraft 7y ago

I like this video by Tom Scott explaining why electronic voting is a terrible idea. https://youtu.be/w3_0x6oaDmI https://youtu.be/w3_0x6oaDmI