Is EVM hacking possible?

Elections results are out and BJP has made a tremendous victory in UP and Uttrakhand. But the opposite party has taken out new excuse to mark their existence. EVM HACKED! Is it so?

Earlier we use to make use of ballot paper for casting vote but as the population of India increased counting in the tradition way became difficult. Here came the need of EVM. EVM was first used by Kerala in 1982 at some polling booth and after 2004 EVM was mainstream. EVM machines are manufacture at 2 places in India, first is Bharat Electronic Limited located in Bangalore and second is Electronic Corporation India limited which is located in Hyderabad.

Both of them produce exactly same machine comprising of two part, first is balloting unit which is in front of voter at the time of vote and other  is at the operator end who give command to cast a new vote. EVM machine can hold 16 different parties name and we can maximum connect 4 machines in parallel making the total count of 64 different parties. After all votes are cast, these machines are sealed and finally open at the time of counting.

It seems like that it is tempers prove but still there are some loopholes. There are 2 ways to hack it, first is by changing the display with new display embedded with Bluetooth so that we can alter the screen count through Bluetooth device and other is to directly rewrite memory but as these machines have no ports, therefore for the purpose of rewriting memory you have to open machine. However, both the ways require physical presence of machine with you and imagine manipulating thousands such machines will take how much time.

Now, do you think were the EVM hacked?

Election commission is planning a new system known as Voter Verified Paper Audit Trail where voter can see to whom they have cast vote by checking the confirmation receipt and later on this paper can be used as audit. It was used at 8 places in 2014 election and expected to use everywhere in 2019 election.

How fingerprint sensor works?

There are plenty of sensors present in our smartphone and fingerprint sensor is one of the most prominent sensor in them.

The password formed by the combination of letter and word can be guessed with the knowledge of computer programming or by hit and trial method. So there was a need of much stronger security, hence fingerprint sensor came into the picture.

There are three different kind of pattern namely Arch, Loop and Whorl which make each fingerprint unique. Fingerprint sensor analyze them for better security and block unauthorized access. Optical fingerprint sensor and Capacitive fingerprint sensor are two major classification of fingerprint sensor.

As one taps his finger from different angle while registering fingerprint for the hardware, Optical fingerprint sensor take snap of finger from different angle and prepare a map removing a common area. This map is stored in the memory and whenever a user tries to open the device with his fingerprint, optical fingerprint sensor makes sure that it is matched with the previous map present in memory. On matching it grant access to use otherwise denied. Map is prepared by taking care of key information of finger like ridges bifurcation, smaller ridges and ridges end. It also takes valley i.e. the gap between two ridges in account to prepare map.

Another kind of fingerprint sensor, i.e. capacitive fingerprint sensor makes use of capacitor of very small size which is placed on the fingerprint sensor. When a user presses his finger on the sensor while registering, ridges area gets activated and capacitor present in the valley region didn’t get activated, and thereafter it prepares a map for the same which is recalled and matched when a user tries to unlock hardware with his fingerprint.

As optical fingerprint sensor takes snap of finger from different angles, so it can be fooled by presenting a copy of fingerprint in front of it, whereas capacitance fingerprint sensor makes use of capacitor and work on ON-OFF concepts so it can’t be fooled easily.

Acceptance rate i.e. how quickly and accurately it identifies fingerprint. Normally the acceptance rate is 90% which make sure that no unauthorized person accesses the account.