
The Economics of Hacking an Election - sohkamyung
https://www.cs.columbia.edu/~smb/blog/2018-08/2018-08-07.html
======
sytelus
This is seriously uninformed article with bad assumptions and assertions.

The first assertion author makes is that attacker is resource limited which is
a pointless assertion for stack sponsored entities unless cost of attack is
astronomical.

The second point author makes is that US elections are highly decentralize for
attacks such as hacking electronic systems, making effective attacks very
expensive. Again this is completely wrong assumption for two reasons:

(1) attacker doesn't need to hack all of US precincts. Thanks to thin win
margins in elections, you just need to flip only few precincts that have been
predicted as "middle". Typically these are just 1-5% of total so cost of
attack is actually very low and could be targeted with precision for a desired
result.

(2) There are only few brands and systems of voting machines and other
electronic systems are actually in use. Again, you don't have to hack all of
them. Just hack one or two and they might be good enough to slip 1-5% margin
you desire. The connection to Internet is irrelevant. There are well known
methods to hide malware in firmware drivers that could have been planted by a
state sponsored hacker who obtained job at one of these companies making these
machines. These kind of malware would be impossible to detect without very
extensive reverse engineering. Think about this for a minute: For a cost of
less than a million dollar (i.e. compensation for single hacker) you can flip
election of entire country. It makes a huge economic sense to any adversarial
government.

Overall, hacking political system has shown to have ROI of 10,000% or more and
it should make a perfect economic sense to businesses and external
governments. You can literally donate just $100K to political candidate and he
would pass a law for you that makes your company 10s of millions for many many
years. It never ends to surprise me that political donations by commercial
entities and ultra-rich is not considered a crime in US. In most other
countries they are known as "bribe". Even better, just flipping few of the
precincts you can flip entire election in to your favor and you can do it all
even legally by precision targeted social media. It's just amazing power to
behold on one of the largest and most powerful country.

~~~
dantheman
This is incorrect:

You can literally donate just $100K to political candidate and he would pass a
law for you that makes your company 10s of millions for many many years. It
never ends to surprise me that political donations by commercial entities and
ultra-rich is not considered a crime in US. In most other countries they are
known as "bribe".

Companies cannot give money directly to politicians and individuals are
limited.
[https://www.opensecrets.org/overview/limits.php](https://www.opensecrets.org/overview/limits.php)

Political Action Committees can accept money, but must be independent from a
candidate.

~~~
michaelt

      Companies cannot give money directly to politicians
    

According to [1] Paul Ryan accepted $121,700 from Blackrock Inc, and [2] says
Charles Schumer accepted $102,950 from Lockheed Martin.

Sounds like companies giving money to politicians to me?

[1] [https://www.opensecrets.org/members-of-
congress/summary/paul...](https://www.opensecrets.org/members-of-
congress/summary/paul-ryan?cid=N00004357) [2]
[https://www.opensecrets.org/members-of-
congress/summary/char...](https://www.opensecrets.org/members-of-
congress/summary/charles-schumer?cid=N00001093)

~~~
maxerickson
They are aggregating the contributions of people associated with the company.
Look at [https://www.opensecrets.org/members-of-
congress/contributors...](https://www.opensecrets.org/members-of-
congress/contributors?cid=N00004357&cycle=2018)

 _These tables list the top donors to candidates in the 2017 - 2018 election
cycle. The organizations themselves did not donate, rather the money came from
the organizations ' PACs, their individual members or employees or owners, and
those individuals' immediate families. Organization totals include
subsidiaries and affiliates._

------
stukh
The real election hacking come from the fact that people are easy to sway. We
succumb to subtle nudges in ways that we aren’t always consciously aware of.
We now live in an era where a given nudge can be directed and concentrated to
the right group of people and doing this at scale is practical.

The adage in politics has been, “All politics is local.” This appears to be
changing in the U.S. Money and influence comes from all over and the issues
that rile up people enough to vote are less and less tied to local problems.
At least this is how I see things. I don’t know a good solution to the
problem. Perhaps Asimov had it right in his story “Franchise”.

[https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Franchise_(short_story)](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Franchise_\(short_story\))

------
hsienmaneja
Are voting machines really connected to the Internet?

------
jmdjmd
All democratic elections are hacked, not in a technical way but in a social
way. Take my country India, for example. The winning party in almost all
elections till 2014 got just under 40% of the total vote. Minorities form
15-20% of the vote bank and the minority vote is always consolidated, i.e.
they vote enmass for a single party (usually for The Indian National Congress
(INC)). In other words, anywhere between 15-20% of the 40% mentioned earlier
is the minority vote. The majority vote is always divided between the many
many warring parties and the minority vote becomes the king/queen maker. No
wonder the INC has always danced to the minorities tune.

I guess the majority had had enough and came together for the first time in
2014, resulting in a win for Narendra Modi.

I also guess the same situation happened in USA in 2016. The usually
apathic/uninterested majority were frustrated/angered with years of
’minoritism’ and bonded together into a single consolidate vote bank that
resulted in Trumps victory.

~~~
veridies
I won’t speak to the specific examples in either India or the US, but I will
say that when you have extreme support for one candidate by members of
minority ethnicities, that typically suggests that the other party is either
apathetic or hostile to their interests. If there are enough members of the
ethnic majority to reach a plurality, then that party will, and should, win.
The fact that they vote en mass for one party isn’t “hacking”; it’s exactly
how elections are supposed to work.

~~~
9712263
In an ideal world where people are intelligent enough to vote for their long
term benefit, then what you said is true.

But let's say a country have little care to minority ethnicities. I have the
many resources to arrange short benefit to them, such as occasional free
dinner for those ethnicities, arranging cheap or free traveling trip for them.
Essentially bribe those minorities.

Now I am elected to become a president. How do I get more resource to bribe
minorities? I just receive donation from the rich and just set law to benefit
them. Those law will get me donation and let the rich suck more money from the
minorities. Now I have those dirty money in hand. Since minorities are living
in a more challenging environment by my policy, those minorities will even
more welcome my bribe and continue to vote for me.

Now you may ask, why are those minorities can't read news? Why they can't
listen to the other side that may benefit to them? Firstly, minorities have
very tough environment and they don't have education and even time to think
about their future. Therefore, they just vote for whoever is familiar or
whoever give free gifts. Secondly, a government could control the propaganda
and paint those opposition as destabilizing country and blaming them as enemy
and reason of their miserable situation.

It's not a hack, but a flaw. Democracy assume all people care enough about
politics to understand the implication of each policy. If people don't have
time resource for this, then it is pretty easy to spread propaganda to paint
some enemy. People in poor condition just want to find someone to blame. And
people trust the one who could bribe them a little benefit.

Of course, there are no better alternative than democracy, but people just too
focus on their living and care to their own short term benefit. Long term
benefit is difficult to promote since no one knows when will this be
effective.

~~~
veridies
That argument is certainly true, but it applies to nearly everyone. Almost no
one is politically well-informed enough to be sure of what’s in their long-
term interest, with most people not understanding for example economics or
environmental issues enough to take an informed position. So politicians
frequently resort to short-term fixes, such as tax cuts, to keep people happy
and voting for them. If more of those short-term fixes benefit minorities,
that still isn’t worse than if they benefit majorities.

~~~
stealthmodeclan
> If more of those short-term fixes benefit minorities, that still isn’t worse
> than if they benefit majorities.

If minorities vote for receiving short term benefits then everyone including
the minorities are knocked out of the long term benefits.

If you can just win by offering a vehicle like horse cart and keep upgrading
it through research and development, adding 1km/hr speed increment every 5
year. Then you'll probably never be able to develop a car because its
development requires long term research and development program, even if
nothing, atleast a working infrastructure.

