back to article Starry-eyed hackers stuff Eurovision's voting app

The Eurovision Song Contest has been targeted by obsessed hackers who stuffed the voting ballots during the final qualifier song performance. Votes flooded into the Melodifestivalen app during the final performance by Jon Henrik Fjällgren, forcing the contest organisers to nix the votes. Head mananger Christel Tholse Willers …

COMMENTS

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  1. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    The £100,000 app

    Shit, and I thought £4.99 for an app was splashing out. Some people must really like their music...

    1. GregC
      Coat

      I have to confess...

      ...to quite enjoying Eurovision itself, it's fun in an odd kind of way, but in many cases your use of the word "music" may be stretching the definition a bit.

      1. VinceH

        Re: I have to confess...

        "...to quite enjoying Eurovision itself, it's fun in an odd kind of way,"

        Not something I bothered with until last year, when I decided a bit of alcohol, Eurovision and a Twitter feed might be a good combo for a bit of fun.

        And it was. I shall be doing the same again this year.

  2. NorthernCoder
    Headmaster

    Melodifestivalen

    It might be good to point out that Melodifestivalen is the Swedish "qualification/election" for ESC.

    As far as I can tell the app was commissioned by SVT (Sweden's equivalent of BBC) and Christel Tholse Willers works for SVT, not ESC.

    1. Velv
      Coffee/keyboard

      Re: Melodifestivalen

      That makes more sense.

      I was going to get all shouty about there only being 1.5million votes across Europe and why was this expensive shit still being shown.

  3. Richard Jones 1
    FAIL

    Eurovision Song Contest

    Is that still going? I think I saw years ago. Is it still as awful as it was then with all those so called 'tactical votes'? No doubt the Russian freedom fighters will get out their ballot stuffers and be ready to pounce. Perhaps Jeremy Clarkson should head our entry.

    I will still avoid the hazard of watching.

    1. Anonymous Coward
      Anonymous Coward

      Re: all those so called 'tactical votes'?

      IMO part of the fun of Eurovision is being shocked/horrified/amused (although not surprised) at how "culturally related" countries vote for each other, often in defiance of any musical sense. Also one has the opportunity to get moderately peeved as nearly no-one votes for the somewhat dull but nevertheless mid-table-worthy British entry, leaving it near the bottom ... because all those "foreigners" :-) are too busy voting for each other's similarly awful efforts. The judging panel thing they now use (is the country vote now half judge/ half popular or something?) has moderated this a bit, but I'm not really sure the entertainment factor has been improved.

      And sometimes, a song/artist turns up and is unexpectedly quite entertaining in its/their own right.

      Not that I'd recommend you make a point of watching it on purpose, mind.

  4. Steve Davies 3 Silver badge

    Let us have a refferendum on this

    (The UK's continued involvelemt in this farce that is)

    You'd probably get a higher turnout than the one that Farage wants.

    1. Anonymous Coward
      Anonymous Coward

      Re: Let us have a refferendum on this

      You could say the same about UK involvement in international football.

  5. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    Music?

    Nah, this is the Eurovision song contest, mate.....

  6. Eclectic Man Silver badge

    Electronic Voting and Counting

    Many years ago I investigated electronic, or more acurately cryptographic, voting schemes. I was unable to find any solution which was both secure and workable. By "secure" I mean that the votrers could be sure that tall the votes had been counted correctly, and the returning officers could be sure that no one had voted more than once.

    I could not devise a scheme which also incorporated genuine secrecy with the requirement for only one vote.

    The real problem lies with the reporting of the result. In essence you are letting your democracy rely on whatever an MS Windows / Unix / Apple dialogue box tells you. You can subvert the counting devices, the vote management system, the announcement systme. Even if every voter gets a signed receipt of vote, and can read it to show which way they voted, it is dificult for other voters to check that everyone else's vote was counted correctly.

    As Tom Stoppard said 'Democreacy is not in the voting, it is in the counting' (or words to that effect).

    Unless there is an independent way to check the votes off-line, you will always be relying on a computer to tell you who you, and everyone else, voted for.

  7. disgruntled yank

    results

    "TIME's Person of the Year is a common target of hackers in web cesspit 4Chan who will direct bots to get tyrants to the top of nomination lists."

    I would point out that in a pre-computer age, Hitler made Time Magazine Man of the Year once and Stalin twice. And there were plenty of second-tier sorts with less than a deep commitment to democracy.

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