Re: Challenge: A malicious election

Here's my feeble entry:

use strict;
use warnings;

my @valid_candidates = ( 'Alice', 'Bob', 'Charlotte', 'David', 'Eve' )
+;
my %tally_for = map { lc($_) => [0] } @valid_candidates;

print "Welcome to the Die Bold 691549 Electrified Election Estimator\n
+";
print "Your candidates are:\n";
print map { "$_\n" } sort @valid_candidates;
print "Enter one name per line, end with EOF.\n";

while ( defined( my $candid_date = <> ) ) {
    chomp $candid_date;

    my $candidate;
    foreach ( @valid_candidates ) {
        last if lc $candid_date eq ( $candidate = lc $_ );
    }

    if ( exists $tally_for{ $candidate } ) {
        $tally_for{ $candidate }->[0]++;
    }
    else {
        warn "Write-in for $candid_date\n";
        $tally_for{ lc $candid_date }->[0]++;
    }
}

my @winner_first = reverse
                   sort { $tally_for{$a}->[0] <=> $tally_for{$b}->[0] 
+}
                   keys %tally_for;
foreach my $who ( @winner_first ) {
    printf "%10s : %d\n", $who, $tally_for{$who}->[0];
}
[download]

What's hard about this is that a correct solution is so simple. Here's one that works:

use strict;
use warnings;

my @valid_candidates = ( 'Alice', 'Bob', 'Charlotte', 'David', 'Eve' )
+;
my %tally_for = map { lc($_) => 0 } @valid_candidates;

print "Welcome to the Die Bold 691549 Electrified Voter Motor\n";
print "Your candidates are:\n";
print map { "$_\n" } sort @valid_candidates;
print "Enter one name per line, end with EOF.\n";

while ( my $candid_date = lc <> ) {
    chomp $candid_date;

    if ( exists $tally_for{ $candid_date } ) {
        $tally_for{ $candid_date }++;
    }
    else {
        warn "Write-in for $candid_date\n";
        $tally_for{ $candid_date }++;
    }
}

my @winner_first = reverse
                   sort { $tally_for{$a} <=> $tally_for{$b} }
                   keys %tally_for;
foreach my $who ( @winner_first ) {
    printf "%10s : %d\n", $who, $tally_for{$who};
}
[download]

Vote counting and reporting take all of 15 lines with no golfing. Practically any deviation from a simple "stash in a hash" implementation is going to be suspicious. I think the best bet for really sneaking something in is to write a lot of bad code that mostly works. Another strategy might be to exploit a bug in some software that the machine uses (e.g., a MySQL bug) rather than have a bug in the machine itself.

Anyway, it's an interesting "problem" but having skulked about the Monastery for a while, I can't imagine I'd get anything past the monks.

Update: I should spoiler out an explanation. So, here's what my entry does "wrong":

Comment on Re: Challenge: A malicious election Select or Download Code

Replies are listed 'Best First'.
Re^2: Challenge: A malicious election by blokhead (Monsignor) on Jun 12, 2008 at 17:04 UTC
Your comment in the spoiler made me think of this kind of an approach to <Reveal this spoiler or all spoilers in this node or all in this thread> use strict; use warnings; my @candidates = qw( Alice Bob ); ## initialize each candidate with 0 votes my %votes; @votes{map lc, @candidates} = ( [0] ) x @candidates; print "Available candidates: @candidates\n"; print "To cast a vote, type candidate's name. End the election with ^D +\n"; ## record the input vote while (<>) { chomp( my $vote = lc $_ ); if ( exists $votes{$vote} ) { $votes{$vote}[0]++; } else { warn "Invalid candidate!\n"; } } ## print all votes print "Final results:\n"; printf "%10s : %d\n", $_, $votes{lc $_}[0] for @candidates; [download] What it does wrong: <Reveal this spoiler> blokhead	[reply] [d/l] [select]
Re^2: Challenge: A malicious election by Porculus (Hermit) on Jun 13, 2008 at 22:46 UTC
Vote counting and reporting take all of 15 lines with no golfing. Practically any deviation from a simple "stash in a hash" implementation is going to be suspicious. I'd have thought there was plenty of room for legitimate complexity. For example, is it really reasonable that a user accidentally typing "Alcie" instead of "Alice" should effectively lose their vote? Of course not! Clearly, to make sure that every vote is correctly recorded, we need much more sophisticated validation routines...	[reply]


Welcome to the Monastery
	PerlMonks