Team Id: 8460
CATEGORY: - ELECTRONICS
UPGRADATION OF ELECTRONIC VOTING MACHINE
1:- PROBLEM DEFINATION
An international conference on the Indian EVM’s and its tamper ability of the said machines
was held under the Chairmanship of Dr. Subramanian Swamy, President of the Janata
Party and former Union Cabinet Minister for Law, Commerce and Justice at Chennai on 13
February 2010. This conference received good response and the conclusion was that the India
was shirking its responsibility on the transparency in the working of the EVMs.
In April 2010, an independent security analysis was released by a research team led by Hari
Prasad, Rop Gonggrijp, and J. Alex Halderman. The study included video demonstrations of
two attacks that the researchers carried out on a real EVM, as well as descriptions of several
other potential vulnerabilities.
Easily Hackable: - US Lab says that, this EVM is very easy to hack.
Before voting: One demonstration attack was based on replacing the part inside the
control unit that actually displays the candidates' vote totals. The study showed how a
substitute, "dishonest" part could output fraudulent election results. This component can
be programmed to steal a percentage of the votes in favour of a chosen candidate.
After voting: The second demonstration attack used a small clip-on device to manipulate
the vote storage memory inside the machine. Votes stored in the EVM between the
election and the public counting session can be changed by using a specially made
pocket-sized device. When you open the machine, you find micro-controllers, under
which are electrically enabled programs, with 'read-only' memory. It is used only for
storage. However, you can read and write memory from an external interface. The
researchers developed a small clip with a chip on the top to read votes inside the memory
and manipulate the data by swapping the vote from one candidate to another.
In order to mitigate these threats, the researchers suggest moving to a voting system that
provides greater transparency.
2:- SOLUTION TO THE PROBLEM DEFINED
(GSM INTERFACING WITH 8051 MICROCONTROLLER)
The balloting unit is connected with an AT89C51 8051 microcontroller, used in the control
unit, then to interface a GSM module at first the microcontroller is connected with
MAX232 IC which is used to convert the TTL/CMOS logic levels to RS232 logic levels
during serial communication of microcontrollers with PC. The controller operates at TTL
logic level (5V) whereas the serial communication in PC works on RS232 standards (-25 V to
+ 25V). Then it is connected with AT89C51, it is an 8-bit microcontroller and belongs to
Atmel's 8051 family. ATMEL 89C51 has 4KB of Flash programmable and erasable read
only memory (PEROM) and 128 bytes of RAM. It can be erased and program to a maximum
of 1000 times. In 40 pin AT89C51, there are four ports designated as P1, P2, P3 and P0. All
these ports are 8-bit bi-directional ports, i.e., they can be used as both input and output ports.