Critical Security Hole Found in Diebold Machines

ckswift writes "From security expert Bruce Schneier's blog, a major security hole has been found in Diebold voting machines." From the article: "The hole is considered more worrisome than most security problems discovered on modern voting machines, such as weak encryption, easily pickable locks and use of the same, weak password nationwide. Armed with a little basic knowledge of Diebold voting systems and a standard component available at any computer store, someone with a minute or two of access to a Diebold touch screen could load virtually any software into the machine and disable it, redistribute votes or alter its performance in myriad ways."

Comments

How this bug was found

[DingerX]

Anyone else think this is sweet?

A Finnish computer expert working with Black Box Voting, a nonprofit organization critical of electronic voting, found the security hole in March after Emery County, Utah, was forced by state officials to accept Diebold touch screens, and a local elections official let the expert examine the machines.

That's right. We've seen this before.

Turns out Diebold has a strong interest in keeping their security systems proprietary.

Re:It's not a bug, it's a feature!

[tassii]

This is yet another liberal urban legend people like to spread around that Diebold somehow tampered with the election. Please stop spreading this FUD.

Unfortunately not FUD. There are documented cases where Diebold's machines subtracted one out of every 100 votes for a democratic candidate. Its only been caught on minor elections and other irregularites with Diebold's machines. From California:

http://www.verifiedvotingfoundation.org/downloads/ resources/documents/ElectronicsInRecentElections.p df

"At least one voter was able to vote twice on her "smart card", and 10 votes were inexplicably lost.

John Pilch, a retired insurance agent who worked as a polling place inspector in San Carlos, said that when polls closed at 8 p.m. Tuesday, the number of people who signed the voter log differed from the number of ballots counted by computers.

"We lost 10 votes, and the Diebold technician who was there had no explanation," said Pilch, who registered complaints with elections officials, his county supervisor and several others. "She kept looking at the tapes."

At least 250 polls opened late because poll workers were unable to start up the machines, so hundreds, perhaps thousands, of people were turned away - many of them disenfranchised because they were unable to return to the polls at a later time that day"

As well as been posted here: http://politics.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=04/11/ 16/1737228