02-15-2020, 07:57 AM
MIT researchers disclose vulnerabilities in Voatz mobile voting election app
Researchers say Voatz security flaws could allow someone to alter, stop, or expose how an individual user has voted.
https://www.zdnet.com/article/mit-resear...ction-app/Researchers say Voatz security flaws could allow someone to alter, stop, or expose how an individual user has voted.
voatz.com Wrote:Voatz is on a mission to make voting safer and more accessible. All citizens have a right to vote regardless of their circumstance.
West Virginia first in the nation Mobile Voting
ZDNet Wrote:Academics from MIT's computer science laboratory have published a security audit today of Voatz, a mobile app used for online voting during the 2018 US midterm elections and scheduled to be used again in the upcoming 2020 presidential election.
I wonder if it was really allowed by any federal institution or if it's just a way to keep statistics for private companies like mass media.
Really, who on Earth can trust an app?Ask yourself any of all of the following questions:
- Are you able to check its source code at any given time?
- Does its code stay uptodate?
- Do you really know who's behind its development?
- Who are the company's owners and contributors?
ZDNet Wrote:"Our findings serve as a concrete illustration of the common wisdom against Internet voting, and of the importance of transparency to the legitimacy of elections," researchers added.
MIT academics urge states to continue using paper ballots rather than mobile apps that transmit votes over the internet.
They say the current paper ballot voting system is designed to be transparent, and allow citizens and political parties to observe the voting process.
Even if they tell you that people in charge of processing the ballots only need an electronic document stating the end results of any specific district as a receipt of sorts, an email, no matter how encrypted it can ever be, won't be as trustworthy as the physical documents used as ballots that actually contain hard evidence of the voters' true will and hopes.
If people have already complained about shady apps hitting the virtual shelves of Google and Apple and stealing the users' money or forcing them to get spam or viruses or to make any sort of payments against their will because of the lack of information on the app's inner workings, how the hell would you ever expect a voting system to be trustworthy?
What if some questionable character like George Soros were behind its funding?
Seriously, don't let the "there's already some mobile app to do that" trend let you think everything needs to be adapted to your cellphone's OS!
What if the app is nothing but a scam? What if people start robbing phones to vote for you or prevent you from voting for your favorite candidate? Even if police is supposed to help you under such circumstances, it'd be impossible for them to handle all those reports at the same time. It might get even worse if you can even notice somebody has stolen your vote for you just "thought" you have sent it back to the electoral authorities' server. What if the internet breaks down that day? What if a foreign country attacks the network that very same day?What's even worse, have you no recollection of the Democratic phone app that has miserably failed to properly and promptly report the results of the Iowa caucus earlier this month? 