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Diebold Voting Systems Grossly Insecure
Several well-known security researchers have examined the code for Diebold's voting machines (which we last mentioned two weeks ago) and produced an extensive report (pdf). The NYT has a story on the report, which cuts to the bone: 'Our analysis shows that this voting system is far below even the most minimal security standards applicable in other contexts. We highlight several issues including unauthorized privilege escalation, incorrect use of cryptography, vulnerabilities to network threats, and poor software development processes. For example, common voters, without any insider privileges, can cast unlimited votes without being detected by any mechanisms within the voting terminal.'
So, can't someone who knows what they're doing write some of these things? This is exactly why jon q public is afraid of things becoming 'technology rich'
I'm not saying that god doesn't exist, merely that he is not necessary - hawking
Here the bit from the article that I find most interesting. To have security flaws is one thing. To not fix them even after you know about them is another.
'But Douglas W. Jones, an associate professor of computer science at the University of Iowa, said he was shocked to discover flaws cited in Mr. Rubin's paper that he had mentioned to the system's developers about five years ago as a state elections official.
'"To find that such flaws have not been corrected in half a decade is awful," Professor Jones said.'
"I don't know half of you half as well as I should like, and I like less than half of you half as well as you deserve."
Who in his right mind would trust a closed-source voting system whose binary executable image is not verifyable by CRC???
and if that doesn't work, there is always a "non-precedent" setting ruling by the Supreme Court..... lol
and no I'm not a Dem
Service guarantees Citizenship! Questions Guarantee GITMO.... Amerika Uber Alles!
Anyone who's even briefly perused comp.risks, even before the post-US-Election-2000 debacle, wouldn't be the least bit surprised by these conclusions.
Scottie's Law strikes again (from Star Trek III): "The more they back up the plumbing, the easier it is to stop up the drains." The simpler the voting system (the less mechanical, electronic, electro-mechanical etc. etc.) is the less open it is to fraud (both officially and unofficially perpetrated) or error (both innocent and culpable).
One more reason I'm glad to live in Canada...
Still hoping for Gentle Treatment...
There are always voting problems. You can fairly easily falsify paper ballots too with $100 worth of equipment. It is even easier in those areas (like Oregon) where all voting is done through the mail. Although there is no excuse to allow known bugs to stick around, there most likely will always be bugs/flaws in whatever method you use for voting.
Any time there is a system, someone will be able to break or hack it. Especially a closed system that isn't open to scrutiny.
At least with the current voting system, while you're there you see everyone being handed 1 ballot, and turning in just 1 ballot. You see the ballot go in the sealed box. There's no secret about what your vote is doing, and no confusion about whether the vote was cast or not, or if anyone is turning in multiple ballots.
Some people, in comments widely circulated on the Internet, contend that the company's software has been designed to allow voter fraud. Mr. Rubin called such assertions "ludicrous" and said the software's flaws showed the hallmarks of poor design, not subterfuge.
"And this is my boy, Sherman. Speak, Sherman." "Hello." "Good boy."
Maybe you should try those ones. Weve been using those in Brazil for almost a a decade. Software code can be evaluated by independent institutions, and as far as I know it does not run Win32. Last elections the whole country used voting machines (no manual votes) And weve got the result (>100,000,000 in few hours).
how else can [insert current party in power] rig the next election
Well, rigging it in a state in which your brother is governor with a supreme court your daddy appointed should be pretty easy...
Hey freaks: now you're ju
So if I point out the flaws in this voting machine do I go to jail (reverse engineering & circumvention) and forever lose my right to vote? (several states do not allow ex-felons to vote)
Rhymes that keep their secrets will unfold behind the clouds.There upon the rainbow is the answer to a neverending story
What's so 'interesting' about their little observation? Their implication that Republicans rigged the Georgia election is based purely on baseless speculation, and is absent of any facts to support their claim. After reading that, I had a hard time taking anything else in the article seriously.
There's a Mercedes gap too. I want one and can't afford one, but it's not government's job to do anything about it.
...but in practice, it could simply be used as an argument FOR centralized, online voting. Please note that the current e-voting system currently in testing is Windows-specific... this could end up being a very bad thing. ("To vote, you must run one of the following operating systems: Windows 2000, Windows XP, Windows ME, Windows 98. Other systems are not supported on www.evote.gov at this time. We apologize for any inconvenience this might cause...")
I KNOW I'm paranoid, but still...I like to think long-term.
Honey, I shrunk the Cygwin
We have already known for a long time that ATMs are badly flawed as well when it comes to security. Even the basic technology is completely outdated and insecure: magnetic strips with four digit pins are just an abomination when it comes to security. The solution has been for banks to deny the problem, blame customers, and pass on any losses that result from fraud that they can't blame on customers to other customers.
So, does it come as a surprise that companies that can't produce minimally secure ATMs can't produce minimally secure voting machines either? Blaming Floridians for "hanging chads" (talk about a broken user interfaces) clearly was only the beginning.
If we want secure voting machines, ATM manufacturers are the last people to go to because they already have proven to be incapable of handling computer security. The only thing they seem to be able to do is make big, heavy metal boxes and pretend that that constitutes "security".
Scalia logic: No batteries necessary.
That's pretty annoying, having to slip in Open Source evangelism. Jeez, just notify the guy of the problem, and when someone asks how to fix it THEN you discuss options.
I enjoy and dabble in Open Source, but I'm getting sick of people going out there and making us as annoying as Jehovah's Witnesses.
Is Open Source the issue here? No. Bad voting machines is the issue. Bragging about how you're trying to whore Open Source out to the government...annoying and doesn't impress anyone.
This is a computer programmed by invisible software. The only record of a vote is a little counter in the guts of the computer program. There is absolutely no way to make it secure. Any system that records votes directly electronically is wide open.
The only difference is who can commit vote fraud. Now anyone who walks up to the machine can commit vote fraud. Even if all of these bugs fixed, large classes of vote fraud remain. The only difference would be that any random person on the street couldn't cheat. However, any custodian would still be able to re-image the drive. Any programmer at Diebold would be able to embed a trapdoor. In short, anyone with exclusive access to open the machine can cause it to cheat. And this 'best case' is only if they fix all of the bugs.
Thats not a lot better. Even the writers of the paper couldn't make a cheat-proof DRE voting program. If an adversary controls the hardware, they control the software. Fundamentally, any non-trivial computer system is not trustworthy; any system whose security depends on a computer should be transformed where the security no longer depends on the correctness of the computer.
For instance, the only nominally trustworthy computer voting scheme is to have the computer be nothing other than a super-intelligent pencil. The voter uses the computer which prints out a paper ballot. The user observes and confirms the paper ballot is correct, then the ballot is dropped into a box. The computer may record results, but as the computer is untrustworthy, those results are untrustworthy. Now, the security and trustworthyness of the computer doesn't matter.
Every security researcher, including the authors of the paper advocates this scheme, but they are ignored by election officials. This includes the two professors who authored the paper, Peter Neumann, and Douglas Jones from the NY Times article, Rivest---the R in RSA--- and hundreds of others.
See: http://www.verifiedvoting.org/index.asp
This is a secure voting system. Brazil has it (and at a tenth the price). Any system without a printer requires 'trusted hardware' in an adversarial environment. Control the hardware, control the election.
Right. Tell that to the 40-year-old computer scientist with 15+ years of experience and a huge chunk of their life invested in CS who has been unemployed for a year, because their skill set wasn't the exact right match to get past HR.
Not everyone fits your stereotype.
Hopelessly pedantic since 1963.
Perhaps the issues of the Democrats registering people who could not legally vote along with trying to getting the out of state military votes thrown out are also issues worth considering?
"All I want is a warm bed and a kind word and unlimited power." - Ashleigh Brilliant
Your joke made me laugh. But the sad thing is that it is the whole point of voting machines.
A paper ballot and a pen is the only form of ballot I trust. And if they don't count the ballots AT THE POLLING PLACE in plain view of the public BEFORE they ship them off to the court house you can't trust the result.
Paper ballot boxes get tampered with all the time. A machine that most people couldn't understand is NOT going to make voting less prone to fraud. If I can't take apart the machanical voting machine to see if it works correctly and I can't look at the code of a computer program and see if it works correctly then why SHOULD I trust it?
We allready had a major election full of obvious vote fraud(On both sides. Bush was just better at it THIS TIME. Gore was just as crooked just not as effective.) Voting machines are just one more way to cloud the issue. A voting shell game run by slick con men.
DEMAND paper ballots! Demand that votes be counted and posted AT THE POLL. Any thing else is a sham!
Slashdot, home of supporters of free software, free music, and free speech.Except for Moderators that disagree with you.
It's quite scary, I think, that this was modded "Insightful."
It's quite scary, also, that this is true. Though if I had been there, I would have had a good laugh at the SC saying that, because the idea is just so damn ridiculous. What's wrong with the citizenry questioning the legitimacy of the election? The people have a right to.
-- What I don't have in intelligence, I make up for in a lack thereof.
The voting machine, running Microsoft?s Windows CE operating system, is extremely easy to navigate
I would rather have an open-source app running on a open-source OS.
All the truely qualified software engineers are not unemployed. If you have the skills to back up what's written on your resume, there really is no problem finding a job.
Sorry, but that's bullshit. Have you been unemployeed recently? You are aware that the economy is in one of the worst states it's been in since the Great Depression?
There are many qualified people who have trouble finding jobs.
I know a number of well qualified people in a number of sectors who have trouble finding work. This includes Java engineers with over 6 years java experience, Unix admins with 10+ years experience, telecom folks, production managers, office managers, etc. Most sectors of the economy are suffering.
Finding a job depends on networking-- who do you know that can help you get a job. Technical skills are very secondary.
In the SF Bay Area, we're flirting with a 10% unemployment rate in the tech sector. 25% of residents in the Bay Area have been laid off in the last several years. Average job search lasts 8 months.
That is caused by more then the "java in 21 days" problem that you suggested.
"Can of worms? The can is open... the worms are everywhere."
Yeah. And the odds of my being audited increase or decrease based upon whom I voted for?
You cannot attach the name of the voter to the ballot and expect free votes.
Sure, I know some people (from elsewhere) that got jobs reasonably quick, but that's because they KNEW SOMEONE on the inside, or had some high connections. I'm not being bitter, they've admitted it to me.
*sigh* indeed. There are many, many, many different reasons why someone could be hired over someone else. One such reason is having someone on the inside who can vouch for them. I wouldn't be where I am today if I hadn't done my fair share of "networking" starting back in college. For potentially equally qualified applicants, having someone on your side on the inside counts for an awful lot in most places. And that's just entry level. How do you think people rise to the top.. dumb luck and good resume?
Don't be bitter because someone else is willing the play the game a step further than you are. Step up to it and start networking with people.
Speak truth to power.
Q: But this is America - who would dare rig an election here?
A: The first person that thought they could get away with it.
Want to Know How to Cheat the GPL? Read On!
Is your post a joke? Think about it. If a party wanted to take power but knew they couldn't do it by popular mandate, they would resort to a number of underhanded tacticts. Aquiring control of the voting machines is one of the more crass and obvious ways to gain power. What better way to control the voting machines than to control the hardware and software?
What is troubling is that the voting machine companies are owned and operated by extreme right-wing republicans who have known connections to the national republican party, either directly or through massive money transfers. Does this prove election fraud? No, but only an idiot would say that it's nothing to worry about.
Nope.
You see, Diebold's customers for ATM machines -- the banks -- have a vested interest in making certain that no money leaves their hands that isn't supposed to. Even their internal practices and procedures assume the employees to be untrustworthy. So the banks obviously gave Diebold a requirements document that ensures that no money leaves an ATM that isn't supposed to.
OTOH, Diebold's customers for voting systems -- the Republicans (yeah, I know, cheap shot, so sue me) -- have a vested interest in keeping their positions of power. Hence, the requirements document Diebold got from them was very likely bereft of any security considerations whatsoever.
Or, to put it another way: "Follow the money."
Schwab
Editor, A1-AAA AmeriCaptions
Palast appears to have staked his career on attacking Bush and conservatives in general.
This sure sounds like a worthy endevor to me, and certainly something more people in this country should be doing. Bush is a liar, and conservatives are anti-democratic. Anyone who attacks these people who are destroying the constitution and trying to establish some sort of fascist theocracy in this country is doing good work in my opinion.
Here in Canada (and probably most other democracies) we have "scrutineers" so the general public doesn't have to worry about that. Each candidate sends a representative to each polling station to observe and make sure things are handled properly. It is in the candidate's best interests to make sure the other guy doesn't get any unfair advantage, so as long as there is more than one scrutineer and they aren't colluding (which is less likely the more scutineers there are) the system is secure.
Scrutineers are very effective with paper ballots, but only with paper ballots. They are not equipped to verify an electronic voting system. So yeah, demand paper ballots. Anyone promoting electronic voting is promoting the neutralization of a very important election security mechanism.
I don't know if this has been offered as a solution yet, but the easiest way to verify an election is to keep a paper trail.
When a person votes, the machine should spit out a piece of paper with the voter's choices listed. The voter verifies the paper, then slides the paper into a slot (in much the same way many current voting machines accept the voter card).
In that way, the voting machines can automate the tabulation, and we can avoid any hanging chads; but the paper trail still exists.
Are there any flaws with this?
Microsoft is to software what Budweiser is to beer.
kill all the lawyers.
The conservatives who created the constitution might beg to differ. And they (gasp) believed in GOD! So to your way of thinking our freedom, and the constitution you pretend to love, is the result of a toddling fascist theocracy? That damned fascist George Washington!
The whole thing is stupid, because it should never ahve gone to the supreme court.
If an election is "too close to call" which means, "within the statistical margin of error" which certainly applied, the issue is supposed to go to the damn legislature, not the supreme court. The executive and legislative branches elect supreme court justices, not the other way around.
ad logicam Claiming a proposition is false because it was presented as the conclusion of a fallacious argument.
Your vote would no longer be anonymous if it had a password attached to it.
Example:
A man comes to your house and says "Hello, I am from oranized crime. Vote this way. Show me your password. Okay. I will be back in two weeks for you to prove that you did what I said."
Alternately:
"I will give you five dollars if you vote for me. I will be back in two weeks for you to prove it, and then I will give you the money."
So there you go. This is actually already happening in Italy because people bring in 3G phones with video cameras to prove to organized criminals that they are voting the right way.
because anyone caught tampering with a vote is already committing a felony and can face up to life in prison?
Why all the hoopla about e-voting and its many flaws. Here in Oregon all elections and other ballots are ballots by mail. It is easy and simple...and it works. As an Oregonian, I receive a ballot about 3 weeks before election day. I can take my time vote carefully whenever I want in the privacy of my own home and then either mail it in or drop it off at one of the several county ballot drops. It's a wonderful thing. BTW, Oregon has some of the highest voter turnouts in the country...I wonder why?!?!
The people who launched the American Revolution and who created the US Constitution could hardly be described as "conservative." That's oxymoronic!!
Revolutionary != conservative.