Once more researchers have uncovered yet another security flaw in electronic voting machines that can be used to manipulate election results. Uncovered by researchers at the Department Of Energy’s Argonne National Laboratory, the flaw in Diebold AccuVote machines allows an attacker to alter a voters selection as they are being committed. While the attack requires tampering with the machines, the device designed by the researchers can be attached and removed without any evidence anything was ever wrong. Worse still the device costs about $10 in parts and can be assembled by anyone with a half decent electronics workbench. The researchers also believe the attack may also be useful against other e-voting systems.

This is just the latest in a continual stream of vulnerabilities uncovered by security researchers that allow attackers to manipulate modern voting machines to their own ends. Unfortunately this pattern is likely to continue as the public is forced to vote on machines that are manufactured by companies who refuse to make their software and hardware designs public. In a perfect world all voting machines would run software and hardware that anyone could examine for flaws. We only need to look to modern encryption to see how well public review works. By making their encryption algorithms public companies have been able to develop incredibly strong encryption and make billions in the process. Why then if public review works so well and can be so profitable are the companies that make OUR voting machines so resistant? Let me know what you think in the comments.

Diebold voting machines vulnerable to remote tampering via man-in-the-middle attack

Your aquarium is pissing off your fish, at least according to a new study by Ronald Oldfield at Case Western Reserve University published in the Journal of Applied Animal Welfare Science. For the study Oldfield observed Midas cichlid in a variety of environments ranging from their natural habitat to home aquariums. Oldfield found that as the size and complexity of the habitat was reduced, the fish behaved with more aggression. Responses ranged from angrily flaring fins to murder. That’s right, a poorly thought out aquarium can drive a fish to murder. While your average goldfish probably isn’t a threat to you, do you really want to take the chance when some extra plastic plants and ceramic castles could help calm the savage beast?

Angry Fish Inhabit Most Home Aquariums

In what can only be called a groundbreaking experiment, scientist at UC Berkley have managed to record video of what a person is seeing by using functional MRI. After showing subjects a set of baseline images and recording the corresponding brain activity, the researchers were able to create composite images that reflected, quite eerily, what the test subjects saw. As you can see from the video above, the images being produced are blurry, though I would imagine early photographs looked similar as the technique was being developed. Currently the researchers are only able to reproduce images that the subject is seeing, though they hope to be able to extend the technology to allow the viewing of dreams and possibly even memories.

While from a scientific standpoint this is amazing, I can’t help but feel a little creeped out by it on a personal level. This really is the stuff of science fiction (not the fun, happy utopia kind either) and while now researchers can only see what you are seeing using a huge machine where will the technology be in 10 or 20 years, especially if they are able to refine the technology to view memories and dreams? The US government already ignores the 4th Amendment wholesale, how long until they ignore the 5th? I can imagine there are some very excited people at Homeland Security imagining setting up scanning stations to pick out people thinking about committing a crime or act of terrorism.

Scientists use brain imaging to reveal the movies in our mind [via Engadget Alt]