Reply #70: No, the problem is not data access, it's data integrity [View All]

[ryanus]

Check this out: Suppose you had a database table that stored the vote tallies. We know that under no circumstances should the votes change when someone is not voting (req 1) and we know that the values for each item on the ballot should either not change or increment by 1 (req 2).

So let's create a database monitor application that watches the data, even running on a separate machine, as long as it can constantly watch the data. It will sound an alarm if the totals change under circumstances that violate the 2 requirements. Now it doesn't matter who has access to the db. You don't even need a gui, just give them the capability to edit the table values directly. It doesn't matter. There's nothing they could do to fudge the data, as long as the db monitor is running. Perhaps the voter could go to the monitor and have it display to her what the difference in totals was from before she voted, and that way she could verify that it recorded her voted correctly.

So data access (or gui controls even) isn't the problem. In fact, more access (the db monitor) made it more reliable. No easter egg would be able to fudge the data on voting box.

With this scenario it's not impossible to fudge the data, but much harder. And this was just one little aspect.

(BTW, to Doug if you are reading, we didn't even need to see the source code for this)