6 ms·

The importance of post-build audits: Do you know what you ship?

brink 3y ago
A lot of things are better off by being made digital. Voting/elections is not one of them. It lowers the bar for fraud and interference.
- pelorat 3y ago
  Voting in the Netherlands is done with pen and paper. This software is used by political parties to generate their candidate lists. It's basically a paper form generator.
  - Freak_NL 3y ago
    Pencil and paper! Voting with a pen invalidates your ballot.
    - omginternets 3y ago
      Why?
      - gpvos 3y ago
        Not sure, but maybe because a pen leaves a deeper mark that could be visible on the back side when the ballot has been folded. (This is a wild guess.)
      - Freak_NL 3y ago
        Strictly speaking you could use a red pen if you bring one, because a single box filled red is what is required, but almost all voters sensibly use the provided red pencil. Any other colour marks the ballot as invalid.
- deleted 3y ago
  [deleted]
- Freak_NL 3y ago
  True. This software isn't voting software though, but if I recall correctly, the tabulating software used to report and collate the reported voting totals (which are hand counted). In the Netherlands voting is done on paper with a red pencil, after a flop with voting computers a decade or so ago, and this process too is backed by a paper trail.
  - gpvos 3y ago
    Paper voting was reinstated because a pressure group called "We don't trust voting computers", formed of hackers and other knowledgeable people, sued the government and won.
- deleted 3y ago
  [deleted]
- helpfulContrib 3y ago
  I believe this is very true, which is to say that digital voting being 'safe' is really a fallacy. Digital media is, by its very nature, eminently falsifiable. All the way to the substrate and back again. Voting can be assisted by digital technologies, but should not be impinged upon by them. Having an auditable trail, with paper, means that when the lights go out, the count can still go on. Always remember, none of this works without the grid. We have built extremely fragile, frangible society upon a highly specious assumption: that up (or down) always means on ..
- askonomm 3y ago
  I don't agree. Estonia has online voting and I do not recall any fraud or interference. I actually think pen and paper would be a lot easier to manipulate or "miscount".
  - the_snooze 3y ago
    How so? I've volunteered to help run elections in two states in the US, and they both used optical-scan paper ballots. In both jurisdictions, the voter is the one who feeds their ballot into the scanner machine ("ballot box") to be counted. The machine makes a digital copy of each ballot and stores it in local memory. At the end of the night, we then report the number of ballots in the box and compare it to the number of ballots we issued out and the number of people who checked in at the registration desk. We call these numbers in, and the precinct chief hand-delivers the paper ballots, digital scans, and seal records to the county for legal and archival purposes. In order to manipulate this, you would need the entire polling place staff to be in on the conspiracy, and they would need to cook up numbers and ballots that all match. All to mess with an election at a precinct with no more than ~1500 registered voters. Where those voters are likely of the same political persuasion as the poll workers themselves. High cost, low reward.
  - jochem9 3y ago
    To manipulate digital votes you only need to hack one piece of software or bribe/social engineer someone involved close enough with it. To manipulate paper votes you need to have presence in enough voting booths and influence the votes there. With paper it might be easier to sneak in a handful of fraudulous votes, but it will be near impossible to commit fraud at a scale that influences the elections. With software it is harder to get that access (although the article shows that one mistake by a dev can make getting access a matter of one hour...), but much easier to then commit election influencing fraud. The fact that you do not recall any fraud either means it didn't happen (let's hope for the best) or didn't get detected. The latter is obviously very scary. There's btw more problems with online voting specifically. It's impossible to guarantee the secret of voting. This is not an issue when voting electronically in voting booths.
forgotmypw17 3y ago
We have the technology today for fully auditable and transparent, yet completely anonymous, voting. One of these days we should adopt it.
- polytely 3y ago
  is it also understandable for the people voting? is it easier or harder to understand than a locked container of ballots being counted publicly? I don't see any reason to have computers involved in the casting of the votes
  - onionisafruit 3y ago
    I believe GP is talking about paper ballots. So the answer to your question is no, it is neither easier nor harder to understand than a locked container of ballots being counted publicly.
- Kalium 3y ago
  A lot of places already use the best available technology for transparent, anonymous, and fully auditable voting. It's paper ballots with public observation and this set of technologies is in wide use. Electronic voting systems are generally an attempt to get something faster and cheaper.
  - mc32 3y ago
    Why do vote counts take so long these last few cycles? We used to get results the same evening, maybe into the wee hours, but except for Florida one year where they had recounts, it didn't take long to tally the votes. Now, with electronic voting the results sometimes take more time, what gives?
    - knewter 3y ago
      The answer is sitting there for you if you'd just believe your government acted like humans
freedude 3y ago
Governments everywhere: The response Maarten received from the CISO should be a model for security response. Everything else with the Dutch government may be a tyrannical horror (I don't know) but this published response was correct.
pvg 3y ago
This post is confusingly mistitled - the word 'voting' does not appear anywhere in the article and the software is not involved in the process of actual voting which is done on paper. Gooogle translate seems to do a decent job of this https://www.kiesraad.nl/verkiezingen/osv-en-eml https://www.kiesraad.nl/verkiezingen/osv-en-eml
- dang 3y ago
  Thanks—changed now. (Submitted title was 'Vulnerability found in Dutch voting software'). Submitters: "Please use the original title, unless it is misleading or linkbait; don't editorialize." - https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
user_7832 3y ago
Question to any HNers who support electronic voting - do you have any criticisms of Tom Scott’s (two) videos against electronic voting? Videos - https://youtu.be/LkH2r-sNjQs?si=INtv6_sr7_V5oxh7 https://youtu.be/LkH2r-sNjQs?si=INtv6_sr7_V5oxh7 (3 years old) & https://youtu.be/w3_0x6oaDmI?si=vwx5xpqX3i1SVqVN https://youtu.be/w3_0x6oaDmI?si=vwx5xpqX3i1SVqVN (8 years old). (Maybe excluding the “use electronic machines for quick results and have paper votes to for a slower, “official” result” argument.)
- deleted 3y ago
  [deleted]
- gchamonlive 3y ago
  The key point is attack scalability, not that either voting system is inherently superior in terms of anonymity and transparency. In Brazil, each voting machine is sealed off, air gapped. The only attack vector is in transit, when the votes for each machine are being transmitted to the regional electoral center, which then announces its results for the region. So it is possible to scale an attack if you somehow had the actor had access to the data in transit and was able to decode, tamper and sign the results again before reaching the regions servers. This for each region. So yeah, while it is possible, I don't think this scales as well as people would think. No election in Brazil had any proof of tampering up to this day. Take that as you may, you can attack me personally, you can question the government's data, you can put in check how we even audit the system, but in decades of the system there isn't any hard evidence of large scale compromise of the electoral system. Having said all that, I think all this talk serves more as a smoke screen for more pressing issues of large scale social manipulation through social media and fake news. My question then is why would anyone in their right mind attempt to compromise the electoral system itself if it is so much more effective to just manipulate public opinion by jeopardising traditional media trust, flooding message systems with fake news sources, use prominent political figures to spread anti-democratic ideas and leverage social media algorithms to radicalize voters?
  - rjmunro 3y ago
    What about before the machines are sealed off and air gapped? What stops tampering with the software in advance? As long as something about the configuration lets you know it's a real election, your payload can be triggered.

A lot of things are better off by being made digital. Voting/elections is not one of them. It lowers the bar for fraud and interference.

pelorat 3y ago
Voting in the Netherlands is done with pen and paper. This software is used by political parties to generate their candidate lists. It's basically a paper form generator.
- Freak_NL 3y ago
  Pencil and paper! Voting with a pen invalidates your ballot.
  - omginternets 3y ago
    Why?
    - gpvos 3y ago
      Not sure, but maybe because a pen leaves a deeper mark that could be visible on the back side when the ballot has been folded. (This is a wild guess.)
    - Freak_NL 3y ago
      Strictly speaking you could use a red pen if you bring one, because a single box filled red is what is required, but almost all voters sensibly use the provided red pencil. Any other colour marks the ballot as invalid.
deleted 3y ago
[deleted]
Freak_NL 3y ago
True. This software isn't voting software though, but if I recall correctly, the tabulating software used to report and collate the reported voting totals (which are hand counted). In the Netherlands voting is done on paper with a red pencil, after a flop with voting computers a decade or so ago, and this process too is backed by a paper trail.
- gpvos 3y ago
  Paper voting was reinstated because a pressure group called "We don't trust voting computers", formed of hackers and other knowledgeable people, sued the government and won.
deleted 3y ago
[deleted]
helpfulContrib 3y ago
I believe this is very true, which is to say that digital voting being 'safe' is really a fallacy. Digital media is, by its very nature, eminently falsifiable. All the way to the substrate and back again. Voting can be assisted by digital technologies, but should not be impinged upon by them. Having an auditable trail, with paper, means that when the lights go out, the count can still go on. Always remember, none of this works without the grid. We have built extremely fragile, frangible society upon a highly specious assumption: that up (or down) always means on ..
askonomm 3y ago
I don't agree. Estonia has online voting and I do not recall any fraud or interference. I actually think pen and paper would be a lot easier to manipulate or "miscount".
- the_snooze 3y ago
  How so? I've volunteered to help run elections in two states in the US, and they both used optical-scan paper ballots. In both jurisdictions, the voter is the one who feeds their ballot into the scanner machine ("ballot box") to be counted. The machine makes a digital copy of each ballot and stores it in local memory. At the end of the night, we then report the number of ballots in the box and compare it to the number of ballots we issued out and the number of people who checked in at the registration desk. We call these numbers in, and the precinct chief hand-delivers the paper ballots, digital scans, and seal records to the county for legal and archival purposes. In order to manipulate this, you would need the entire polling place staff to be in on the conspiracy, and they would need to cook up numbers and ballots that all match. All to mess with an election at a precinct with no more than ~1500 registered voters. Where those voters are likely of the same political persuasion as the poll workers themselves. High cost, low reward.
- jochem9 3y ago
  To manipulate digital votes you only need to hack one piece of software or bribe/social engineer someone involved close enough with it. To manipulate paper votes you need to have presence in enough voting booths and influence the votes there. With paper it might be easier to sneak in a handful of fraudulous votes, but it will be near impossible to commit fraud at a scale that influences the elections. With software it is harder to get that access (although the article shows that one mistake by a dev can make getting access a matter of one hour...), but much easier to then commit election influencing fraud. The fact that you do not recall any fraud either means it didn't happen (let's hope for the best) or didn't get detected. The latter is obviously very scary. There's btw more problems with online voting specifically. It's impossible to guarantee the secret of voting. This is not an issue when voting electronically in voting booths.

forgotmypw17 3y ago

We have the technology today for fully auditable and transparent, yet completely anonymous, voting. One of these days we should adopt it.

polytely 3y ago
is it also understandable for the people voting? is it easier or harder to understand than a locked container of ballots being counted publicly? I don't see any reason to have computers involved in the casting of the votes
- onionisafruit 3y ago
  I believe GP is talking about paper ballots. So the answer to your question is no, it is neither easier nor harder to understand than a locked container of ballots being counted publicly.
Kalium 3y ago
A lot of places already use the best available technology for transparent, anonymous, and fully auditable voting. It's paper ballots with public observation and this set of technologies is in wide use. Electronic voting systems are generally an attempt to get something faster and cheaper.
- mc32 3y ago
  Why do vote counts take so long these last few cycles? We used to get results the same evening, maybe into the wee hours, but except for Florida one year where they had recounts, it didn't take long to tally the votes. Now, with electronic voting the results sometimes take more time, what gives?
  - knewter 3y ago
    The answer is sitting there for you if you'd just believe your government acted like humans

freedude 3y ago

Governments everywhere: The response Maarten received from the CISO should be a model for security response. Everything else with the Dutch government may be a tyrannical horror (I don't know) but this published response was correct.

pvg 3y ago

This post is confusingly mistitled - the word 'voting' does not appear anywhere in the article and the software is not involved in the process of actual voting which is done on paper. Gooogle translate seems to do a decent job of this https://www.kiesraad.nl/verkiezingen/osv-en-eml https://www.kiesraad.nl/verkiezingen/osv-en-eml

dang 3y ago
Thanks—changed now. (Submitted title was 'Vulnerability found in Dutch voting software'). Submitters: "Please use the original title, unless it is misleading or linkbait; don't editorialize." - https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html

user_7832 3y ago

Question to any HNers who support electronic voting - do you have any criticisms of Tom Scott’s (two) videos against electronic voting? Videos - https://youtu.be/LkH2r-sNjQs?si=INtv6_sr7_V5oxh7 https://youtu.be/LkH2r-sNjQs?si=INtv6_sr7_V5oxh7 (3 years old) & https://youtu.be/w3_0x6oaDmI?si=vwx5xpqX3i1SVqVN https://youtu.be/w3_0x6oaDmI?si=vwx5xpqX3i1SVqVN (8 years old). (Maybe excluding the “use electronic machines for quick results and have paper votes to for a slower, “official” result” argument.)

deleted 3y ago
[deleted]
gchamonlive 3y ago
The key point is attack scalability, not that either voting system is inherently superior in terms of anonymity and transparency. In Brazil, each voting machine is sealed off, air gapped. The only attack vector is in transit, when the votes for each machine are being transmitted to the regional electoral center, which then announces its results for the region. So it is possible to scale an attack if you somehow had the actor had access to the data in transit and was able to decode, tamper and sign the results again before reaching the regions servers. This for each region. So yeah, while it is possible, I don't think this scales as well as people would think. No election in Brazil had any proof of tampering up to this day. Take that as you may, you can attack me personally, you can question the government's data, you can put in check how we even audit the system, but in decades of the system there isn't any hard evidence of large scale compromise of the electoral system. Having said all that, I think all this talk serves more as a smoke screen for more pressing issues of large scale social manipulation through social media and fake news. My question then is why would anyone in their right mind attempt to compromise the electoral system itself if it is so much more effective to just manipulate public opinion by jeopardising traditional media trust, flooding message systems with fake news sources, use prominent political figures to spread anti-democratic ideas and leverage social media algorithms to radicalize voters?
- rjmunro 3y ago
  What about before the machines are sealed off and air gapped? What stops tampering with the software in advance? As long as something about the configuration lets you know it's a real election, your payload can be triggered.