tldr: they are clarifying that even though it didn't prove fraud, it didn't exclude it either, it also points a bunch of fishy stuff they are urging the TSE to look into.
Interesting development to say the least
Full note translated:
"In order to avoid distortions in the content of the report sent yesterday (9.11) to the Superior Electoral Court (TSE), the Ministry of Defense clarifies that the accurate work of the team of military technicians in the inspection of the electronic voting system, although not pointed out, it also did not exclude the possibility of fraud or inconsistency in the electronic voting machines and in the 2022 electoral process. In addition, the report indicated important aspects that require clarification.
which are:
there was a possible security risk in the generation of programs from the electronic voting machines due to the occurrence of computers accessing the TSE network during the compilation of the source code;
the functionality tests of the polls (Integrity Test and Pilot Project with Biometrics), in the way they were carried out, were not enough to rule out the possibility of the influence of a possible malicious code capable of altering the functioning of the voting system; and
there were restrictions on the adequate access of technicians to the source code and software libraries developed by third parties, making it impossible to fully understand the execution of the code, which covers more than 17 million lines of programming.
As a result of these findings and other obstacles listed in the report, it is not possible to guarantee that the programs that were executed in the electronic voting machines are free from malicious insertions that alter their functioning.
Therefore, the Ministry of Defense urgently requested the TSE to carry out a technical investigation into what happened in the compilation of the source code and a thorough analysis of the codes that were actually executed in the electronic voting machines, creating, for these purposes, a specific commission of renowned technicians from society and technicians representing the inspection entities.
Finally, the Ministry of Defense reaffirms the permanent commitment of the Ministry and the Armed Forces to the Brazilian people, democracy, freedom, the defense of the Fatherland and the guarantee of Constitutional Powers, law and order."
Here's the link to the article:
Translation courtesy of Google :P, I was gong to translate it myself, but I'm lazy, and the results of the machine translation is pretty good.
Gotta love 17 million lines of code for what is essentially just a small multiple choice quiz + answer storage.
I have over 20 years of software dev experience, and I think it could easily be done in under 20,000 lines without much effort.
For comparison the linux kernel source is somewhere over 20 million lines. Am I supposed to believe that they implemented an operating system from scratch and then did decades of further development to improve it ???
Paper ballots are the only way to go, but if you are doing things electronically, this is beyond hideous.
Yeah, I'm 25+ sw-dev as well.
You forgot all the back doors and algorithms, however, that would not hit the 17M mark. What is probably the bulk of code is obfuscation and dead code, so those doing the code reviews will just give up and give it an OK. Oh, and don't forget all those big copyright header comments... /s
I would wager, that if I could get a glance at the code, finding Clean Code would be less likely than winning the lottery.
Agree 100% with you on paper ballots. Electronics have no place in the bigger elections, where there is a lot at stake.
Yes, obfuscation most likely.
What do you guys mean by obfuscation? writing a bunch of nonsense that does nothing to hide the real working bits?
Well, I was tounge in cheek, but by obfuscation I mean bloated and ugly code that hide what it really does, unless you either are in the know, or spend an eternity walking through the webs of useless algorithms.
Yep, I commented about that in my previous thread, there's absolutely 0 reasons for a software that's supposed to only tabulate votes to have over 17 million lines of code
20k lines?
I could probably whip out something simple that does it in around 2k lines with python,
because really, all the thing is doing is showing a big input prompt on screen for the candidate numbers, then you type the number in using the integrated number pad, it shows the picture and name of the candidate, you confirm pressing the big green button, that's it.
candidate_x_votes += 1, done.
Yeah, 2k is totally doable too. I was giving extra lines for fancy UI and the logic to tally the final results between machines. I have too much experience with estimation to trust my initial time frame assumptions. Its sadly way more realistic to multiply estimates by 2, 5, or even 10 ;)