Comment by rmunn | Hacker News Reader

Comment by rmunn | Hacker News Reader

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Just remembered another report about a vote-counting machine with a security problem. Can't remember enough details to find the original report, but the guy found that the QR code the machine was scanning to read the vote did not have any kind of replay protection, and that although the ballots were printed on special paper, the machine did not have any verification of the paper being fed into it, and would accept plain photocopy paper. Meaning that all that would be needed to "hack" that particular machine, if the report was accurate, would have been to get hold of a ballot belonging to someone you know voted for your preferred candidates, and have it for 20-30 seconds of secrecy, long enough to make one photocopy before giving it back to the voter. Easy to do if the voter and the poll worker are in cahoots. And then you can run off 50, 100, 250 copies of that ballot and stuff the ballot box. Would be caught on a recount... probably. But it shouldn't be possible to do that sort of thing in the first place.

The simpler the machine, the better. As I said in my other comment, I'm about ready to go back to locked wooden boxes myself, opened and counted in full view with cameras rolling.

> And then you can run off 50, 100, 250 copies of that ballot and stuff the ballot box.

At least at my polling place (but I'd really hope this is universal), the machine (the ballot box, effectively) is in the middle of the room, and closely watched. You would not be permitted to stuff more than one ballot into it. (Not to mention this would be voter fraud.)

> Easy to do if the voter and the poll worker are in cahoots.

Again poll watchers are the answer.

> The simpler the machine, the better.

The simplicity of the machine does nothing for this attack? In fact a wooden box is perhaps most vulnerable. But, again, this is completely mitigated by poll watchers. (Not to mention such an attack would likely be mitigated by other voters simply going "yo, what are you doing?"…)

> Would be caught on a recount... probably.

… aside from perhaps a discrepancy between the count of voters who voted on the roll, and the number of ballots in the box (on the initial count), a recount isn't really catching this.

I suppose if I wanted to mitigate this, you could put a signed "This is the ballot for the 2026 election" (+nonce, so that if someone duplicates it, we can pick out the duplicates/replays) on the ballot paper, and attempt to control physical distribution of actual ballots. But now we need to generate a nonce, and we're right back to "I'm sure an LCG is sufficient, right?"

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