Sebla E.

July 26, 2026

Pac-Man Case Study | The US Votes

Technological Perspective

You may have heard the news about electronic voting being manipulated in the United States elections.

Is it true that an electronic voting system was hacked?

Is such a cyberattack possible in such a critical process? Let’s examine it together.

First of all, for a country like the USA, which is constantly in the spotlight, there are many good/bad scenarios that can be described.

This is also a form of disinformation based on awareness.So what does that mean?Excluding mass production defects, you’ll find more complaints about the most well-known brands.

Examples of the best known ones:

Let’s consider a small brand of oven that is being prepared for market entry and is being sold in home appliance stores or supermarkets.

If you are a conscious consumer and your budget allows, it is natural for you to choose a brand that is sold throughout the country or anywhere in the world, and for which you can quickly obtain spare parts and technical service, instead of lesser-known brands that lack spare parts and technical service, or are more prone to rapid consumption.

Therefore, let’s consider this: complaints about a fast-moving consumer good, coming from a 20% consumer group who are currently unable to afford it or are students or haven’t yet acquired this information, will occupy 20% of the complaints page. However, complaints about a much better-known brand of home appliances, one that everyone wants in their homes and that will last for 20 years, will occupy 80% of the same page.

Following the same logic, the whole world will talk about and form opinions on a country like the USA, which they see in the media every day, simply because it’s the most accessible topic on social media and news.

However, countries/brands/people that have achieved such a strong position in the economy and in the world have equally capable employees and support teams who can advise and protect them and who are knowledgeable about legal processes. This is similar to how you might receive immediate responses from relevant brands on the complaint pages you write, but receive much longer or no response/solution at all from lesser-known brands. Because you’ve also paid for that.

Therefore, when a well-known state is so prominent, it becomes much easier for us to discuss it and reach our own conclusions.

Our brain’s logic is always programmed to find an explanation and reach a conclusion. This is our most human behavior.

As a side note: Larger companies will also advertise more due to their budget resources. This will allow us easier access to product features and make it easier to recognize the brand.

Now let’s get to the voting issue !

Initially, news of social media manipulation surfaced during the last elections. This issue has a much older history.

First of all, who was Donald Trump before he became a politician?

Donald Trump is the son of a German father and a Scottish mother. During his education, his father, Fred Trump, had built his companies into a $200 million fortune before his son entered the business world.

So, Donald Trump grew up in a family with an already wealthy business background. After graduation, he consolidated his company, Elizabeth Trump & Son Co., into The Trump organization, and built the Trump Towers we know today in many parts of the world. The Trump family is a wealthy family in the real estate sector.

Since 1984, following the Trump Towers, they have continued to build and operate casinos in Atlantic City and golf courses in various locations. Among their subsidiaries, they have also opened a football club and a company that supplies products needed by their own businesses, turning this into a separate business.

This is similar to the strategy used by franchise companies – like hamburger companies – to open their own farms to source their own meat, milk, and bread.

On the other hand, he also establishes universities and foundations. During this time, while managing such large organizations and budgets, he also deals with lawsuits.

It is impossible to deny that the Trump family possesses a strategic genius for business.

It is also important to understand that this institution has had commercial relationships with the Advertising & Media Sector for many years to facilitate its commercial investments and the sale & marketing of these investments.

Similarly, these are like the home appliance brands whose commercials we see on television; these home appliance brands are not just companies that manufacture home appliances, but also large holding companies that operate simultaneously in sectors such as furniture, energy, and media.

Following this journey, Donald Trump begins his political career, simultaneously running election campaigns.

Every company/person/institution has its own unique promotional methods. This isn’t just unique to politicians. We use every method we know to share our product or opinion. This could be a brochure or a radio advertisement. Regardless of your profession, what’s truly important isn’t the identity itself, but the efficient use of effective communication methods.

Now let’s get to the issue of the allegations;

Without touching on politics, it has been alleged that Donald Trump, during his time working with Cambridge Analytica, manipulated social media and stole votes for him with support from some countries. Other politicians who were candidates at the time also complained about this situation.

I would particularly like to emphasize that, as far as I understand from what I’ve read in the media, the promotional method was a strategy of selling (in this review, selecting) a product (in this review, a person) by exposing it to information and visual memory, much like in hamburger and cola advertisements.

This is the same method used by influencers; there’s a marketing analysis that helps us buy recommended products by identifying when users are most active on social media, and this information is publicly available.

(Remember your childhood)…

Our families were influenced by the influencers of the time (newspaper ads,television and radio ads).

We all had those display cabinets where we put our televisions.Did you remember brown and hard blankets or ornate and heavily patterned curtains. Yes, our parents influenced too. Because generally we had all of them.

Just like those old, stiff tiger/bear patterned (usually brown) blankets that everyone remembers and are still used in Russia today.

“The one that reaches the most people sells the most.”

In this scenario, we can also look at influencers as politicians. 🙂 – (Just kidding.)

We generally see this as a disadvantage (Is the CIA listening to us? 🙂

However, if we don’t look at it from that perspective, when we can find the same product on sale thanks to the same advertisements, we forget about the CIA 🙂

Since Trump already comes from a family of businesspeople, it appears he has continued this approach by employing similar sales and marketing tactics.

The drawback here is;

He continues this with his political identity.

Because politics is the product of a culture/tradition accustomed to presenting itself to people in different ways.

People’s academic careers, parliamentary and news debate programs, and rallies, among others…

this strategy falls outside the realm of traditions/culture.

Be careful with your social media;

When you research a product, you’ll see more ads for that product than other people.

Social media algorithms are truly amazing for finding old friends.

In fact, you can even find lost children/relatives; there are stories of siblings who were adopted and raised separately in two different countries, recognizing their similarities and finding each other.

This is due to usage rate and accessibility.

Are you still angry or complaining?

Cambridge Analytica’s place in the case study;

Founded as a British political consultancy firm – I won’t go into the underlying political views as reported in the media – and allegedly integrated into Facebook during the Trump election period, this third-party software, which claimed to be conducting academic research, was said to have collected data from an application that could also pull users’ friends. It was shut down following the Trump scandal.

Now let’s move on to the Technology side;

Have you ever read the terms and conditions when creating a Facebook account or installing an app on your phone? (I don’t usually read either)

Have you ever read the information texts when creating an account on Facebook or installing an app on your phone?

Usually, the answer is no. A contract shouldn’t be as long as a book, and none of us have the time for that. However, we have to accept the contract to use the application. This has become a natural part of our lives.

Even in job applications today, you are informed that your information may be shared with third-party companies.

Some companies leave an option here; you can choose or not.

Many, however, do this:

They write a single contract and include all the clauses. Even if you need to buy something, apply for something, or just browse a site, you have to check that single checkbox.

And Finally…

Facebook is being held responsible for the ambiguity in agreements for apps integrated with Facebook, and the Facebook company is also on trial.

If the story that Trump worked with Cambridge Analytics and used this data to garner votes on social media is true, does that make him guilty? We don’t know. We don’t know if other politicians in the same campaign used similar methods, and frankly, that part doesn’t interest me.

The first situation is not a preventable problem.

The second situation is that I am obligated to pay attention to what I read and listen to, and to choose what best suits my needs when buying/voting or using an application. That’s all I can do.

That’s all about voting.

Now let’s get to our main topic: Voting Devices.

“The voting machine has been hacked!” it was reported.

That device is our ‘AVC-Edge’ voting machine.

It is manufactured for voting purposes and continues to be used for that purpose.

When it first came into use in the early 2000s, doubts about its safety arose, and a number of speculations began to circulate.

The year is 2007..

Dr. Shacham is a professor of computer science at the UC San Diego Jacobs School of Engineering and, together with his team, conducted a comprehensive 2007 review of voting machines used in California in collaboration with Princeton University.

They contact Andrew Apell, who buys the machines at auction after they’ve been decommissioned by the county in North Carolina, and they purchase them. They buy 5 machines for $82 each plus $900 in shipping.

Summary of Logical Information

The devices are not connected to the internet; they are closed-loop. They operate at the physical layer called DRE (Direct Recording Electronic). This makes hacking the device remotely or via the internet impossible.

To collect/count the votes, you must have physical access to the devices. Simultaneously, the voting machines are protected by serial numbered seals and polling station officials. The data contained within these devices is transferred from internal memory to portable cards called PCMCIA.

Under the leadership of Prof. Shacham, these devices are brought to the university and physical vulnerability tests are performed on them.

These tests discovered a security vulnerability, and a new external application was installed on the device: Pac-Man! 🙂

And the team describes it like this

What is the Sequoia AVC Edge?

It’s a touch-screen DRE (direct-recording electronic) voting machine. Like all DREs, it stores votes in a computer memory. In 2008, the AVC Edge was used in 161 jurisdictions with almost 9 million registered voters, including large parts of Louisiana, Missouri, Nevada, and Virginia, according to Verified Voting.

What’s inside the AVC Edge?

It has a 486 SLE processor and 32 MB of RAM—similar specs to a 20-year-old PC. The election software is stored on an internal CompactFlash memory card. Modifying it is as simple as removing the card and inserting it into a PC.

Wouldn’t seals expose any tampering?

We received the machine with the original tamper-evident seals intact. The software can be replaced without breaking any of these seals, simply by removing screws and opening the case.

How did you reprogram the machine?

The original election software used the psOS+ embedded operating system. We reformatted the memory card to boot DOS instead. (Update: Yes, it can also run Linux.) Challenges included remembering how to write a config.sys file and getting software to run without logical block addressing or a math coprocessor. The entire process took three afternoons.

Why PAC-MAN?

In celebration of the 30th anniversary of the iconic arcade game, we reprogrammed the AVC Edge to run Pac-Man. It uses MAME to emulate the original hardware. (We own the electronics from a real Pac-Man machine.) We could have reprogrammed it to steal votes, but that’s been done before, and Pac-Man is more fun!

In Summary

Our favorite attack method is the White Hat attack method, which is also the most fun.

It’s done under control, in a laboratory, and most importantly, while having fun!

The best part is that such a young team has worked with academics who have earned recognition for their accessibility and guidance. (I wish I were that lucky.)

See you in our next Case Study.