$2 Million Reward for Hacking Elections
April 18, 2009 by Rico Mossesgeld
Filed under Misc. Gadgets, Portable Audio, Services
There are plans in the Philippines to offer a PHP 100 million reward (a bit over $2 million) to anyone who can find holes in the automated election system for the country’s 2010 elections. This Monday, Philippine Senator Alan Peter Cayetano will file a resolution seeking to allocate that much money from the automation project’s $230 million budget.
As Technograph reports:
Cayetano, at a press conference Friday, said that if any IT expert can establish that the system to be used in the 2010 polls is not secure from fraud and tampering, “Comelec should cancel the contract, save the P11 billion and sue for damages the contractor in the event of such successful hacking.”
He said he would rather revert to the manual counting of votes if the computerized system would lead to wholesale cheating.
The senator does not seem to realize that even the most well-designed system will have flaws that someone will eventually discover—especially if they have such a massive incentive to do so.
Why would the senator insist on canceling the system’s implementation if (actually when) an exploit is found? Wouldn’t it make more sense to collect the data on any holes discovered, plug them, and thus maximize the $2 million reward’s impact?
It seems Mr. Cayetano’s paranoia about automating elections in the Philippines is clouding his judgment. What do you think, dear readers?
Mr Cayetano maybe right on the hack challenge. But he shouldn’t publish that over the media. Instead, he could’ve challenge the developer instead. Publishing that challenge over the media, im sure they’ll get a lot of traffic in the coming days. Good luck to their security system lol.