09 January, 2012

Indian Electronic Voting Machines (EVM's) Exposed



Above: Security Analysis of India's Electronic Voting Machines (Abstract Paper)

Elections in India are conducted almost exclusively using electronic voting machines developed over the past two decades by a pair of government-owned companies. These devices, known in India as EVMs, have been praised for their simple design, ease of use, and reliability, but recently they have also been criticized because of widespread reports of election irregularities. Despite this criticism, many details of the machines' design have never been publicly disclosed, and they have not been subjected to a rigorous, independent security evaluation. In this paper, we present a security analysis of a real Indian EVM obtained from an anonymous source. We describe the machine's design and operation in detail, and we evaluate its security, in light of relevant election procedures. We conclude that in spite of the machine's simplicity and minimal software trusted computing base, it is vulnerable to serious attacks that can alter election results and violate the secrecy of the ballot. We demonstrate two attacks, implemented using custom hardware, which could be carried out by dishonest election insiders or other criminals with only brief physical access to the machines. This case study contains important lessons for Indian elections and for electronic voting security more generally. Please visit India's EVM for more.

1 comment:

yeshwant sane said...

EVM machines is only an indication that the so-called democracy is capable of manipulation by the ruling party in power, which may have a criminal motivation. Unless Therefore gullible citizens of this country demand pure and spiritual Ruler Through a vision Improved by Evolution of consciousnessTo divinity, this deception is bound to continue by one or the other instruments of deception.EVM is merely a new varient.