CAN EVM BE HACKED??

OPPOSITION’S HOWLING FOR PAPER BALLOTS!!!

SARASIJ MAJUMDER

THE ANSWER TO THE QUESTION ABOVE  IS---"EMPHATICALLY NO.”

Electronic Voting machines can only  be manipulated, or hacked,  ONLY WHEN  they are connected to a network, through which HACKER can access. Otherwise—only E- Ballot controller through Control Unit,  can do something.  Most western democracies  sometime or other used these kinds of machines and due to the fact that they were connected to the web through a network,  hackers did manipulate the machines. The size of their populations allowed them to revert back to paper ballots instead of innovating further  on the EVMs. The only other country of our size in terms of populations holds ONLY indirect elections i.e. people do not elect the president, people’s representatives elect the president, and that is CHINA.

THE MACHINES USED BY INDIAN ELECTION COMMISSION ARE NOT CONNECTED TO ANY NETWORK.

The ballot unit(where you vote) is only connected to the control unit(which the presiding officer has) and will now be connected to the VVPAT(Stands for Voter Verified Paper Audit Trail) which is just printing a paper ballot of your vote for audit purposes only. The point being, that in order to manipulate a machine, you will need to change its hardware which is not possible because of the multiple randomization and checking that is conducted on each machine in the presence of representatives of all the candidates as part of the ELECTION PROTOCOL.

Another interesting fact to note that with the addition of the VVPAT, each polling booth can handle about 1400 votes only. This is because each VVPAT machine has a roll of paper that can print about 1500 slips, about 100 of which get used up during the calibration in front of the representatives of the political parties. Since it is a cumbersome process to change the roll mid-polling, the limit of voters to each polling booth is limited to 1400.

HISTORY, AND EVOLUTION  OF EVM IN INDIA

M1 (model one) of EVM machines were manufactured till 2006 and had all necessary technical features making M1 non-hackable contrary to claims made by some activists. On the recommendations of the Technical Evaluation Committee in 2006, M2 model of EVMs produced after 2006 and up to 2012 incorporated dynamic coding of key codes thereby enabling transfer of the key – press message from Ballot Unit (BUs) to Control Unit (CUs), in an encrypted form as an additional security feature. It also contains Real time setting of each key press so that sequencing of key presses including so called malicious sequenced key presses can be detected and wrapped. Further, the ECI- EVMs are not computer controlled, are standalone machines and not connected to the internet and /or any other network at any point of time. Hence, there is no chance of hacking by remote devices. The ECI-EVMs do not have any frequency receiver or decoder for data for wireless or any external hardware port for connection to any other non-EVM accessory or device. Hence no tampering is possible either through hardware port or through Wireless, Wi-Fi or Bluetooth device because CU accepts only encrypted and dynamically coded data from BU. No other kind of data can be accepted by CU.

The ECI-EVMs now in use  have some of the most sophisticated technological features like one time programmable (OTP) microcontrollers, dynamic coding of key codes, date and time stamping of each and every key press, advanced encryption technology and EVM-tracking software to handle EVM logistics, among others to make the machine 100% tamper proof. In addition to these, new model M3 EVMs also have tamper detection and self-diagnostics as added features. Since, software is based on OTP the program cannot be altered, re-written or Re-read. Thus, making EVM tamper proof. If anyone make, attempt, the machine will become in operative.

SOME ASPECTS OF EVM VALIDATING,AND CALIBRATING PROTOCOL:-

1.Any EVM is only one-time programmable. You have to delete all data, and reload SOFTWARE  to re-Programme it.

2.EVM is tested before elections in presence of all political party representatives. They will sign and certify this (Each and Every EVM).

3.Once the testing is done, they will be randomized and sent to Strong rooms where there will be only one door locked and the lock is sealed in presence of all political party representatives with their signatures on the seals. Whenever there is a discrepancy with any EVM in the case of security, it wouldn't be used.

4.Whenever the EVM is moved from one place to another, it will be informed to all political parties and they should send the representative to check.

5.Even on the day of polling ,each EVM will be again checked in presence of the representatives of the contestants before the actual polling starts.

The videos showing tampering of such machines are obviously not following the security measures, and may be FAKE. They are either misguiding the people by showing  something, where they hide what they are doing or else they are replacing the original parts inside.

WHAT EMERGE:

We can   conclude that a EVM with such high security measures (by following all the election commission security measures, with  Protocols)  CAN’T BE HACKED. The addition of VVPAT has taken this task from very difficult to nearly impossible because the electronic votes can also be tallied against the paper ballots printed by the VVPAT.

We also can conclude that  paper ballot can be easily  rigged.  That is why OPPOSITION want to switch back to PAPER BALLOTS.

When someone, or any political party repeatedly asked for Paper Ballot – the person/ party has other sinister agenda in mind.

NOTE:-- The article essentially is partly COMPILED and  partly  COMPOSED , using many SOURCES. Important ones are listed below. I express my acknowledgement to all of them.

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REFERENCES:--

[1] Elections in China - Wikipedia

[2] https://eci.gov.in/files/file/9405-checklist-for-presiding-officer-february-2019/

[3] Not more than 1,400 voters per polling station: Election Commission

[4] e237afb5-6543-4060-873b-341c7f3b0e44.pdf

IMAGE:-- GOOGLE.

Note: This post is for education purpose only. Not related to the  case at SC on  EVM issue.