Tampering EVMs – Some references

In my last post i wrote about the possibilities of EVM’s being tampered.  And i was surprised to see a similar views expressed in Indian express by Satinath Choudhary.

http://www.indianexpress.com/storyOld.php?storyId=45296

“In the above news, satinath says Tampering EVMs is a child play.   He further quotes as below.Computer chips that control the EVMs can be easily programmed to do all kinds of improper manipulations. For example, after a certain number of people (perhaps hundreds) have voted, the rest of the votes may be channeled to a chosen candidate. This is just one among many mischievous tricks possible.”

The same view is expressed by me in my last post.  The author further says that tampering cannot be detected, as it requires more than 100 votes to be polled to detect any deviations or tamperings.

Interestingly  he had filed a PIL in supreme court few years back, demanding release of the EVM software code and also hardwarde design publicly as open source.

http://www.linuxjournal.com/article/7561

in the above link, it is quoted as

“The reliability of the EVMs manufactured by the (Indian) public sector Bharat Electronics Limited and the Electronics Corporation of India Limited is doubtful. The software and circuits embedded in the EVMs could very well contain numerous flaws or deliberate backdoors for tampering,” commented Ravi Visvesvaraya Prasad, writing in the prominent Delhi-based newspaper ‘Hindustan Times’.”

the above link also says

“How does the EVM work? Frankly, we don’t know. (A professor from the one of the prestigious Indian Institute of Technology who explained its working on TV) could only test the EVMs as a black box. A proper scrutiny of the EVM is possible only when the source code of the EVM is public,” argued Ashhar Farhan on the tech-oriented India-GII mailing list, which focuses on Internet and technology issues. The list is hosted on the servers of the network of the Computer Professionals for Social Responsibility, the oldest non-profit, mass membership organization working on social impacts of computer technology.”

So its evident that no one knows what is the software that runs inside the EVMs and also the hardware that is available.  In such a scenario, what is the gaurantee, that the EVM’s are NOT manipulated, and the software that runs in it are genuine?

Some experts say, its easy to write a self-destructing trojan, where it deletes itself after the election is over.  But those who are in the IT and electronics fields, will know that sky is the limit with software and hardware and no matter how hard we strive to protect, there is always a way.

Rajeev srinivasan, a columnists, has posted his views in the rediff.com

http://election.rediff.com/column/2009/may/17/loksabhapoll-after-the-counting-and-other-stories.htm

The Indian voter is not stupid, and is exquisitely sensitive to things that affect his wallet. Therefore it is a little surprising that the average voter drank the UPA’s Kool-Aid.

There is, of course, the possibility that the average voter did not in fact fall for the UPA’s charms, and that this election was subject to massive fraud. I am talking about Electronic Voting Machines (EVMs). Having spent many years in the high-tech world, I do not trust computers, especially embedded systems. Researchers in the US have shown how easy it is to break into EVMs, which is why they have not adopted them. They have realised how important it is to have a paper audit trail, hanging chads and all.

It would not be extraordinarily difficult to install a programme with a Trojan Horse in it. To outward appearances and to ordinary testing, the programme would appear normal. However, when it is fed a sequence of keystrokes by the agent of the party committing the fraud, the Trojan Horse wakes up, and then, regardless of what buttons the voter actually presses, it can assign a certain (non-suspicious-looking) percentage (not 90% but, say 45%) to the preferred party. The Trojan Horse can even be programmed to quietly delete itself when the voting is over. Nobody would know any better, as there is no paper trail.

Let me emphasise that I do not have any evidence that this happened in 2009, but it is worth investigating. There were too many surprising — almost miraculous — victories by certain candidates whom the casual observer would have written off. By Occam’s Razor, the simplest explanation is fraud. I would like to note in passing that in 2004, expecting the NDA to commit fraud, an Indian Communist in the US had prepared a suit alleging EVM fraud. Therefore it is clear that the thought has occurred to various people that there could be EVM fraud.

Reports of EVM tampering in the past:

EVM’s tampered in orissa
http://orissamatters.com/2009/04/23/1389_evm/

Jayalalitha against the EVM.

http://news.in.msn.com/national/article.aspx?cp-documentid=1784728

What other countries had to say on this..
http://news.idg.no/cw/art.cfm?id=003AE63C-17A4-0F78-31DDDC0DCFA62609
http://www.wvcag.org/news/fair_use/2004/07_01e.htm
http://arstechnica.com/old/content/2004/05/3721.ars
http://www.usatoday.com/news/washington/2006-06-26-e-voting_x.htm
http://www.mcclatchydc.com/226/story/64711.html