University Students Demonstrate Just How Easy it is to Rig an Election

As part of his advanced computer science class, Rice University Associate Professor and Director of Rice's Computer Security Lab Dan Wallach instructed his students to do their very best to rig a voting machine in the classroom. The results are a bit frightening. The undergraduate and graduate students discovered first-hand that it’s fairly easy to manipulate computer software used in today's voting machines.

Here's how the experiment played out:

Wallach splits his class into teams. In phase one, the teams pretend to be unscrupulous programmers at a voting machine company. Their task: Make subtle changes to the machines' software -- changes that will alter the election's outcome but that cannot be detected by election officials.

In the second phase of the experiment, the teams are told to play the part of the election's software regulators. Their task is to certify the code submitted by another team in the first phase of the class.

"What we've found is that it's very easy to insert subtle changes to the voting machine," Wallach said. "If someone has access and wants to do damage, it's very straightforward to do it."

The good news, according to Wallach, is "when looking for these changes, our students will often, but not always, find the hacks."

"While this is a great classroom exercise, it does show how vulnerable certain electronic voting systems are," Wallach said. "If someone had access to machines and had the knowledge these students do, they surely could rig votes."

Even though students were often able to find the other team's hacked software bugs, Wallach said that in real life it would probably be too late. In 2006, electronic voting machines accounted for 41 percent of the tallied U.S. votes.

"In the real world, voting machines' software is much larger and more complex than the Hack-a-Vote machine we use in class," he said. "We have little reason to believe that the certification and testing process used on genuine voting machines would be able to catch the kind of malice that our students do in class. If this happened in the real world, real votes could be compromised and nobody would know."

Wallach hopes that by making students aware of this problem, they will be motivated to advocate changes in America's voting system to ensure the integrity of everyone's vote.

Posted by Rebecca Sato

*Portions of this post were extracted from a Rice University news release.

Comments

[RJ]

I hate to sound partisan, but doesn't it seems like Republican leaders are generally a lot more enthusiastic about e-voting than the Dems and Independents? Maybe they just want the votes to be tallied faster, or could it be that they also know just how easy it is to rig electronic voting machines?

Either way, no one can credibly argue that e-voting is the fairest, safest way to go. I didn't trust e-voting even before reading this article, and now I'm even more wary.

[pdm2]

You think this is bad?

Please watch Hacking Democracy, which aired on HBO.

http://www.hackingdemocracy.com/

The past 2 Presidential elections were in fact rigged, but the Justice Dept. are Bush cronies as Gonzales so un-eloquently showed us, and the Federal Courts are stacked with GOP idealists, and the no one in congress wants the General Population to panic if this gets out, so out comes the brooms and we live with the wanna-be dicktatortot W.

If GOP tries this again with Obama up 10+ in the polls there's gonna be trouble, and all those detention centers the DHS has been building the last several years are gonna get filled up with political prisoners exercising their 1st amendment to hold the crooks in office accountable, but labeled by lameduck as terrorists.

The preferred tactic is now voter suppression and challenging voters based upon residence, who have been foreclosed on, but only in poor minority neighborhoods.

Godless Oppressive Profiteers (GOP).

[d peckman]

As a never have been anything but an independent (~50+ years), I find it incredible that people can be so staunch in their beliefs. If the above comments are understood, then they might also believe the democrats are angels. Having witnessed so many "pranks" and power plays by pols of either ilk and greediness allowed by so many in business (rep and dem), I've come to believe the only way to avoid much of this evil is for average americans to start again with new leaders who have integrity!

[libertarian]

Why is it that whenever a democrat loses an election, it must be rigged? How about their ideas are bad? Why can Visa do millions of transactions daily with no problems and yet we fear the code in voting machines? How about ACORN rigging elections in every district they are in? d peckman-I agree with your thoughts, but who in their right mind would subject themselves to this process????

[roninmodern]

A few points (and yes I'm a democrat)

1 - ACORN can't rig elections, all they do is get people to register to vote.

2 - Corporations OWNED by people high up in the BUSH ADMINISTRATION manufacture the majority of electronic voting machines.

I have every right to want a paper ballot.

[peter]

Yes it only the GOP that cheats! As there is no history of rigged/fraudulent voting in Chicago!

[Stan]

Building a secure computerized voting system is not impossible. You can build in checks and safeguards that make the system reliable. I have my masters in Information Assurance, and I have the designs for such a system. However I have yet to find anyone interested in developing it. Perhaps because there is so little interest in having fair elections.

[sailingsoul]

Quote "Wallach hopes that by making students aware of this problem, they will be motivated to advocate changes in America's voting system to ensure the integrity of everyone's vote."

Is this saying that America's best "hope" for fraud free elections lies with our youngest adults, still in college and not with the voters or election officials, who's responsibility it is now? We're screwed! It has been obvious year after year, where election results run equal down to a tenth or hundredth of a percent. For some not so obvious, it seems. SS

[Chris Mikaitis]

This is old (stumbled) so I doubt anyone will be here later, but it's interesting to note that Brazil recently fixed this problem... see

http://hardware.slashdot.org/story/09/10/31/0120223/Contest-To-Hack-Brazilian-Voting-Machines?from=rss

They put the voting source code out in the open and offered money for people to break it... sounds like a good solution to me...

[assy mcgee]

theres been cheating for as long as theres been voting