ELECTRONIC VOTING MACHINE(EVM) HACKABLE OR NOT
- 2. Agenda:-
What is an EVM.
How does it looks like.
How does Blackbox looks like.
Is EVM hackable.
How the EVM is tampered.
How to avoid this from happening.
- 3. What is EVM:-
An Electronic Voting Machine consists of two Units – a
Control Unit and a Balloting Unit – joined by a five-
meter cable.
The Control Unit is with the Presiding Officer or a
Polling Officer and the Balloting Unit is placed inside the
voting compartment. Instead of issuing a ballot paper,
the Polling Officer in-charge of the Control Unit will
press the Ballot Button.
The EVMs were commissioned in 1989 by Election
Commission of India in collaboration with Electronics
Corporation of India Limited.
The Industrial designers of the EVMs were faculty
members at the Industrial Design Centre, IIT
Bombay. The EVMs were first used in 1982 in the by-
election to North Paravur Assembly Constituency
in Kerala for a limited number of polling stations.
- 6. Is EVM hackable:-
A lot of people have said if something as
safe as a bank account can be hacked, why
not an EVM. Hacking would require an EVM
to be connected to Internet but EVMs have
no internet connection. So, hacking an EVM
is not possible.
BUT WHAT HAPPENS WHEN WE
TEMPER WITH AN EVM… LET’S
SEE…
- 7. Tempering with an EVM:-
An attacker with brief access to EVMs can tamper with
votes and potentially change election outcomes. We
demonstrate two attacks that involve physically
tampering with the EVMs’ hardware.
First, we show how dishonest election insiders or other
criminals could alter election results by replacing parts
of the machines with malicious look-alike parts. Such
attacks could be accomplished without the involvement
of any local poll officials.
Second, we show how attackers could use portable
hardware devices to change the vote records stored in
the machines. This attack could be carried out by local
election officials without being detected by the national
authorities or the EVM manufacturers.
Safeguards against these attacks are either absent or
woefully inadequate.
- 9. Can the problems with EVMs
be fixed?
Not easily. The entire class of voting
systems to which these EVMs belong
has inherent problems that stem from a
lack of transparency. They force voters to
trust software and hardware without
proper means of verification.
The Election Commission likes to speak
of "checks and balances", with various
procedures believed to make fraud
harder. Drastically improving procedures
might make some kinds of fraud more
difficult, but cannot eliminate the risks we
describe.
- 10. Frequently asked questions:-
Is there any way to prove that the
EVM has been compromised?
How the fact that the machine is
tampered does not come across
during moch elections?
Does the political parties know which
EVM is going to be placed in which
sector?