EVM , ELECTRONIC VOTING MACHINES , HACKING , ELECTORAL FRAUD IN INDIA - CAPT AJIT VADAKAYIL

EVM MANIPULATION , MALICIOUS SOFTWARE ,  TAMPERING STORAGE OF CAST VOTES , COUNTING SPEED VERSUS MURDER OF DEMOCRACY , PRINTER PAPER TRAIL FOR VOTER CONFIDENCE , UPA VICTORY IN 2004 AND 2009 USING EVM IS UNCONSTITUTIONAL -- CAPT AJIT VADAKAYIL

Let me put a video for you.  Two of the MOST hated souls in India, are having a chat on NDTV---- 

a pro-Congress, pro-WTE ( waitress turned empress ) TV channel.

Is there any way, Robert Wadhera -nay- Vadra ( angrez hai na!) , ( the husband of Priyanka Gandhi and son-in-law of Sonia Gandhi ), can get elected to the Parliament in India ?

Yes, by an EVM !

For my foreign readers --  Robert is faster on the draw than SUDDEN, the cowboy of Oliver Strange western novels, who can shoot from his hip , faster than greased lightning.

He has made theFAAASTEST millions of dollars in India. 

You put his name in Wikipedia , and they will tell you about his shady business deals.

If you want to know who the woman in green shirt is , punch into Google search- INDIA'S WORST JOURNALIST BARKHA DUTT

Well , this is the pathetic state of Indian, our sold out media,  and our ruling politicians who love a Italian Queen Bee more than their motherland.

65 years ago, we had just broken the chains of slavery -- 800 years of slavery--first under the Muslim invaders and then under the White Christian invader. We were reduced from the richest nation of the planet to the poorest. 

Being a command of ships for past 3 decades, I do know a bit about electronic PLC and Microprocessors manipulation.

EXAMPLE AAA ) I remember , we installed a brand new membrane Nitrogen plant in the first drydock ( at Japan ), a new room mounted on top of the poop deck  . The Jap superintendents of the Jap owners , did their usual upstart rush-rush, and some critical steel welding was left aside to be done at sea, by the ship’s crew.

So the ship’s engineers did the electric arc-welding without use of return current cable, and the PLCs’ and microprocessors got corrupted.  Entire automation went for a toss—as this was team play between panels in Nitrogen room, bridge, ECR, CCR and Pump room entrance. .  The solution was to send a Jap makers engineer ( guarantee period ) half way across the world for repairs , and this would cost a fortune.

Instead a new street smart Captain by the name of Capt Vadakayil was sent.

I am NOT an electronics or computer engineer, but I do have the grey matter on how to take automation interlocks and sequential safe guards for a royal ride .  

So we managed to do the loading without going off hire.  After I finished a contract and went back to the ship after 9 months , they engineers were still cheating the system the same way I did so as NOT to go off hire ( I had kept a written account on how to do this ) .

I did NOT allow this to go on any further, and then a Jap service engineer came and did the repairs. Even he could NOT comprehend , how I managed to circumvent the automation.

I am sure many of my readers have NOT understood what I mean.

So let me put a second EXAMPLE BBB )

I sent to take over command of a Chemical tanker with Zinc tanks. The ship used to load Methy Tert Butyl Ether ( MTBE ) . Our inert gas system was IGG not clean Nitrogen plant. So after unloading MTBE at San Francisco, using smoky gas oil burnt IGG, we had to go to Jose Venezuela to load lab grade Methanol. The ship was on this run.  

At Panama canal, a British Tank Cleaning Suptd used to embark, to do the final cleaning and wall wash tests. This man was paid a fortune just to be on board for 3 days. He was sort of indispensable.

The wall wash tests used to be done electronically by Mass spectrometer , instead of using lab reagents for HC,and Chlorides. The lore on the ship was , that things happen like magic after this Limey comes from UK. Till then the tanks fail miserably in the wall wash. 

So after I  took over command ,  the Brit came on board. Our zinc tanks were clean already , and was good enough for Methanol but was failing on the spectrometer.  Jose also has a similar spectrometer donated by the French Charterers.

I gave instructions to the Chief Officer.  Once the Brit tank cleaning suptd comes on board, he must be watched every time he comes to the CCR near the spectrometer. If he fiddles around with it, I must be called down immediately. 

Sure enough Chief officer calls me . : Sir, he is fiddling around with the machine right now, he does NOT know that we are watching him”.

I immediately came down and caught him in the act , literally with his pants down “ Why are you fiddling around with the span and sensitivity adjustments?  I demand an explanation!.  You have just altered the Quadratic equation coding !. So this is how you make yourself indispensable –by shining at the expense of the poor ship staff ”.

His face and body language explained it all. He could just mumble an apology.

The tanks were clean, as they were all methanol sprayed with crew in gas suits with airline breathing 

apparatus  — it was just that the test was failing on the “doctored “ spectrometer.

Let me give a third EXAMPLE CCC )

I had joined a Chemical tanker at load port Amsterdam , as a sailing Superintendent. 

The officers and crew were entirely European and Russian. I was to train the crew to do one set of operations - a standard loading , a standard discharge and a standard tank cleaning, do a CDI at load port and a oil major vetting at disport and then get off .  

After I left the ship after 6 weeks at the French disport , I remember being totally drained.   It is NOT easy to make people UNlearn wrong practices and then learn standard practices.  This is even though, the 4 senior officers we with me at the Head Office for 10 days of theoretical training.

So when I went to the CCR along with the CDI inspector, I saw two Dutch service engineers repairing the tank pressure systems. All 24 Stainless steel tanks when opened out and were at atmospheric pressure were showing all haywire pressures—some positive , some negative. 

So I asked them, how long they had been working on it. They said for about 4 hours—they had boarded as soon as the gangway was down. So I told them “ I am the Tech Superintendent .  You must stop your work, connect back whatever you have disconnected and leave the ship –  if there is breach of contract we will pay you ” .  

The Lithuanian Chief Engineer was a bit shocked. He asked me if I was a Navigator or an Engineer. The Dutch electronic service engineers were even more shocked.

After we sailed out I took the Chief Engineer and the Russian Electrical Officer on deck and showed them how to dissipate some static using a jumper wire between two terminals on a junction box on deck. 

Every tank had its own junction box with sensors and PCBs.  Much later Chief Engineer came to me totally amused.  All 24 tanks were showing correct readings— and all it took was a jumper wire.

WHAT MUST BE UNDERSTOOD IS THAT IN THIS YEAR 2012.   ALL THIS CAN BE DONE USING A REMOTE CONTROL.

So a few months ago, the US drone manufacturers were boasting that nobody can hijack their drones . They were made to eat dirt when a group of students , hacked  into  encrypted video the drones  transmitted to US military common bases on the ground.  Their Keylogger software  infected these systems. Then their hijack program captured  data from UAV surveillance missions, to take over control of the drones.

This is NO big deal .

We are talking about hacking stupid  EVMs’ which are the dirt in the finger nail of a professional hacker.

VERY SOON CHINA WILL START MASS PRODUCING HIGH TECH DRONES —AND USA WHO IS HAVING DRONE MONOPOLY (AND MISUSING THEM LIKE STATE TERRORISTS) ,  WILL SAY THAT DRONES ARE NO GOOD FOR HUMAN RIGHTS , (LIKE LAND MINES) AND BAN THEM OFFICIALLY USING UNO.

India uses roughly 1.4 million EVMs in 829,000 polling stations in a general election.

In 1984, the Supreme Court of India held that the use of electronic voting machines in elections was “illegal” as the Representation of People (RP) Act, 1951 did not permit use of voting machines in elections.  Later, the R.P. Act was amended in 1989 incorporating Section 61A.  

However, the amendment says voting machines “may be adopted in such constituency or constituencies as the Election Commission may, having regard to the circumstances of each case, specify.”  Violating the provisions of the R.P Act, the Election Commission has conducted 2004 and 2009 nationwide general elections only using electronic voting machines. 

This makes the Sonia Gandhi's ( UPA) election victory ( going by the 1984 judgment of the Supreme Court ) , of 2004 and 2009  illegal.

The electronic voting machines are safe and secure only if the source code used in the EVMs is genuine. Shockingly, the EVM manufacturers, the BEL and ECIL have shared the ‘top secret’ EVM software program with two foreign companies, Microchip (USA)and Renesas (Japan) to copy it onto microcontrollers used in EVMs. This process could have been done securely in-house by the Indian manufacturers. 

Several developed countries in the world rejected Electronic Voting Machines (EVMs) because they are difficult to secure, easily subject to manipulation and open to large scale fraud and pose a serious threat for free, fair and transparent elections in democratic societies. 

EVMs  are allowed in most states of the US only with a paper back up. Indian EVMs do not produce a paper trail, which is  a major drawback . 

Potential dangers of “vote fraud” and more importantly, lack of transparency and verifiability associated with them prompted ban or restrictions of their use. Developed nations like the United Kingdom, France, Japan , Italy, Germany, Holland and Singapore have so far stuck to voting on paper ballots, owing to their simplicity, and verifiability.

Voter confidence in the Indian democratic system is paramount!.  Are we short of man power in India by any means?

Sustaining a fair and free  democracy is more critical than saving election costs or any gain in efficiency.

Indian people want elections results that can be physically verified, with a paper trail. The Indian voter must have a way to know that his vote has indeed gone to the party he has voted for.  Otherwise EVM voting is unconstitutional .

For example The EVM voting in Ukraine was all rigged as per CIA.

Paper trail means , an EVMs should print a paper record of each vote. This paper must be deposited in a conventional ballot box. This ensures physical evidence and speedy results. A Voter Verified Paper Ballot (VVPB) provides an auditable way to assure voters that their ballots will be available to be counted. 

Without VVPB there is no way to independently audit the election results. A decision in favour of installing a printer would mean upgrading over 14 lakh EVMs used in elections. Provision of printed ballot papers would enable officials to recount the votes in case of any dispute between candidates when a narrow victory margin is involved.

Above Lynn and Evelyn Rothschilds in their Chennai NGO.

In the Netherlands, in 2006, licenses of 1,187 EVMs were withdrawn after citizen group `We do not trust voting machines` showed they could hack into EVMs in 5 minutes from up to 40 metres without the knowledge of voters or election officials. The nation will return to paper voting.” (Publication: ComputerWorld, Dt: 19-05-2008, Author: Andreas Udo de Haes)

When the Indian National Congress surpassed all projections and shocked the nation, to win 262 seats in 2009,  According  to  Dr. Subramanian Swamy, President of the Janata Party (24-8-2010) , the  Leader of Indian National Congress Mrs. Sonia Gandhi reportedly hired hackers to hack into election results of the electronic voting machines, which resulted in landslide victory of the Indian National Congress in the national elections in 2009. (Electronic Voting Machine: Excellent tool of manipulation- by News Desk, December 17, 2011-http://www.weeklyblitz.net/1993/electronic-voting-machine-excellent-tool)

Above: This video went viral in USA--fraudulent voting machine in Pennsylvania alters the vote from Obama to Romney

Voting is a fundamental right and this process is what  democracy is all about. There must be a way for a voter to cast a REJECT vote, where he rejects all the rotten eggs he has to choose from. If the REJECT votes win, the elections must be held again with fresh candidates.

The EVMs were devised and designed by Election Commission of India in collaboration with two Public Sector undertakings viz., Bharat Electronics Limited, Bangalore and Electronics Corporation of India Limited, Hyderabad. The EVMs are now manufactured by the above two undertakings.

EVMs were first used in 1982 in the by-election to North Paravur Assembly Constituency of Kerala for a limited number of polling stations (50 polling stations)

EVMs are powered by an ordinary 6 volt alkaline battery manufactured by Bharat Electronics Ltd., Bangalore and Electronic Corporation of India Ltd., Hyderabad. This design enables the use of EVMs throughout the country without interruptions because several parts of India do not have power supply and/or erratic power supply.

Currently, an EVM can record a maximum of 3840 votes, which is sufficient for a polling station as they typically have no more than 1400 voters assigned. Currently, an EVM can cater to a maximum of 64 candidates. There is provision for 16 candidates in a Balloting Unit. 

If the total number of candidates exceeds 16, a second Balloting Unit can be linked parallel to the first Balloting Unit and so on till a maximum of 4 units and 64 candidates. The conventional ballot paper/box method of polling is used if the number of candidates exceeds 64.

The EVMs cannot be pre-programmed to favour a party or a candidate because the order in which the name of a candidate/party appears on the balloting unit depends on the order of filing of nominations and validity of the candidature, this sequence cannot be predicted in advance. Further, the selection of EVMs for polling stations is randomized by computer selection preventing the advance knowledge of assignment of specific EVMs to polling stations.

The general process of EVM voting is as follows:

1. The voter checks in  with the voter’s ID  with poll workers .  The  polling personnel and the agents verify the name  and identify the voter .  They obtained signature or thumb print of the voter . To prevent double voting, they mark the voter’s right index finger with indelible ink

2. Next, a poll worker presses the BALLOT button on the control unit to allow one vote. This causes  a green READY light to glow on the ballot unit.

3. The voter enters the polling booth and presses the blue button for the candidate of his or her choice. A red light next to the candidate button glows, the ready light turns off, and the control unit emits a loud beep to indicate that the vote has been cast. The red light then turns off automatically. This process repeats for each voter.

4. At the end of the poll, the presiding officer removes a plastic cap on the control unit and presses the CLOSE button, which prevents the EVM from accepting further votes. The ballot unit is disconnected and the control unit is placed in storage until the public count, which may occur weeks later.

5. On the counting day, the control units are delivered to a counting centre. In public view, an election  official breaks a seal on the control unit and presses the RESULT button . The display on the control unit shows a sequence of outputs: the number of candidates, the total votes, and the number of votes received by each candidate.

6. The Counting officials manually record the totals from each machine and add them together to determine the results of the election. The machines are then placed in storage until the next election

EVM manipulations can be via hardware of software. As of 2012, Indian EVMs’ are solely dependent on importing the microchips used in them.  Computer-based voting machines can have software bugs or even election-rigging malicious software in them. The 2010 discovery of the Stuxnet cyberweapon, which used a thumb drive to attack Iran‘s nuclear facilities and spread among its computers, illustrated how one type of attack could work

Dr. Alex Halderman, professor of computer science in the University of Michigan says, “EVMs used in the West require software attacks as they are sophisticated voting machines and their hardware cannot be replaced cheaply. In contrast, the Indian EVMs can easily be replaced either in part or as wholesale units.” 

One crucial part that can be faked is microcontrollers used in the EVMs in which the software is copied. EVM manufacturers have greatly facilitated fraud by using generic microcontrollers rather than more secure ASIC or FPGA microcontrollers. Not just only microcontrollers, mother boards (cards which contain microcontrollers) and entire EVMs can be replaced. 

Neither the Election Commission nor the manufacturers have undertaken any hardware or software audit till date. As a result, such manipulation attempts would go undetected. To detect such fraud, the upgraded EVMs have a provision to interface with an Authentication Unit that would allow the manufacturers to verify whether the EVM being used in the election is the same that they have supplied to the Election Commission.

The EVM manufacturers developed an “Authentication Unit” engaging the services of SecureSpin, a Bangalore based software services firm. The Unit was developed and tested in 2006 but when the project was ready for implementation, the project was mysteriously shelved .

In normal operation, the EVM limits the rate of voting to no more than 5 per minute. However, Clip-on  device bypasses the software restrictions of the EVM, so an attacker is able to again forcibly take control of an EVM and stuff the electronic “ballot box” with any number of votes. These attacks are easy to perform, but they would be hard to detect or defend against.

Dishonest insiders or other criminals with physical access to the machines at any time before ballots are counted can insert malicious hardware that can steal votes for the lifetime of the machines. 

Any computer software is basically generated from software programming and coding. And all these soft wares could be tampered with by a computer programmer who knows the source code. Testing electronic voting systems for security problems, especially if they were intentionally introduced and concealed, is basically impossible. If malicious coding is inserted by programmers into commercial software that are triggered by obscure commands , the election results can change completely.

The votes that are cast using the electronic voting machines, are stored in a safe storage or space in the computer machine memory.  The time gap between election and the counting of votes is a risk to possible hacking and manipulation .   

An Indian AVM can be hacked by  just inserting a simple chip behind the display section of the control unit, which would go unnoticed. When the results button is pressed on the counting day and the results begin to flash on the display screen of the control unit, the Trojan in the inserted chip will get activated.

Alex Halderman, a researcher at the University of Michigan, and a colleague at Princeton University hacked into a paperless touch-screen voting machine in 2010 and installed the video game Pac-Man. That lab exercise took three afternoons but did not break any tamper-proof seals and left no traces.

Similarly, he and Princeton researchers in 2006 demonstrated that if someone could get a few minutes’ unattended access to a paperless machine, that person could install a software virus that could spread to other machines and switch those machines’ votes before deleting all traces of itself.

In fact, Dr. Halderman quips, he has a paperless e-voting machine in his office now. It plays the University of Michigan fight song “on command because I hacked it,” .

Where is the intelligence in physically securing machines with seals? If a seal is broken, what can be done? Votes can be recounted only if the machines gave a printout.. Dont ever foregt that only electronic records can be changed.

For an election to be free and fair, then if the results are in doubt, the ballots can be checked and counted again by a different set of people/machines.  With EVMs, there is no mechanism to do a fresh count. The individual voter must be assured that the candidate he casts his vote for,  actually gets that vote.

In a video, Hari K.Prasad  ( Managing Director of NetIndia Group Of Companies), Prof J. Alex Halderman ( Electrical engineering and computer science at the University of Michigan  ) and Rop Gonggrijp demonstrate two kinds of attacks against a real Indian EVM.  One attack involves replacing a small part of the machine with a look-alike component that can be silently instructed to steal a percentage of the votes in favour of a chosen candidate. These instructions can be sent wirelessly from a mobile phone by SMS. 

Another attack uses a pocket-sized device to change the votes stored in the EVM between the election and the public counting session, which in India can be weeks later.   These attacks are neither complicated nor difficult to perform, but they would be hard to detect or defend against. The best way to prevent them is to count votes using paper ballots that voters can see.

See video above: The 2009 elections where Sonia Gandhi won , was a surprise to all Indians --check out the blue tooth technology in hijacking the EVM. 

Hari Prasad Vemuru, a jailed Indian e-voting researcher, is one of the four winners of the 2010 Pioneer Awards of San Francisco headquartered Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF), a leading civil liberties group.  

How do you like this? 

Instead of feeling happy that an Indian –an expert security researcher--  Hariprasad  Vemuru, revealed serious flaws in our EVMs’ , he was jailed by UPA.  Initially Prasad spent a year trying to convince the government , but they insisted that the Indian EVMs’ government-made machines were ‘perfect’ and ‘tamperproof '.

This is the pathetic state of India under WTE ( waitress turned empress ) rule. 

There is no security concern per se in procuring microcontrollers from foreign manufacturers as this is merely a piece of hardware. After procuring the microcontrollers from these manufacturers, the EVM manufacturers, namely the BEL and ECIL, could have fused program in the microcontrollers, as “One Time Programmable – Read Only Memory (OTP-ROM)” chips, in their own manufacturing premises. This would have ensured that the program in the microchips remained secure. 

But, what these manufacturers have done is punishable under Indian  law . 

They have shared the ‘top secret’ software program with these chip manufacturers so that they can fuse the source code permanently into the microcontrollers.

The parts needed to build the “alien electronics” for hacking the voting machine cost hardly a few thousand rupees. Remote controls ( to over write ballots ) with blue tooth can be operated from quite a distance away, in modern times. India spends a fortune to hold elections. 

To do ELECTRONIC VOTE MANIPULATION ( EVM ) – all it costs is a few rupees and a student who is electronics savvy. 

Hey, how about having Robert  Wadhera - nay- Vadra as our next  Prime Minister ? TEEE HEEEEEEEE !

Grace and peace!

CAPT AJIT VADAKAYIL
..