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

The Shock! The Surprise!

[GaryPatterson]

So the closed-source company with apparent links to the incumbent government and a record of blocking any attempts to investigate their code turn out to have security flaws?

Okay - closed-source versus open-source is a non-issue, but I expected something like this from Diebold sooner or later.

I'm seriously worried though. Here in Australia a lot of ATMs have been replaced recently with shiny new Diebold machines. I've no doubt they're harder to hack, but it's not an encouraging sign.

Re:Funny isn't it?

[typical]

They make a voting machine that is atrocious and faulty.

To be fair, even if it were someone else, voting machines that submit the vote in electronic form simply have fundamental problems with accountability. Yes, Diebold has had some atrocious engineering problems, but even if you took the best group of engineers on the planet and asked them to replace the pencil or hole punch machine with a fully electronic form, they'd still have a vastly more exploitable system than the traditional system.

I view Diebold as representative of a lot of companies that get government contracts -- obtaining unneeded pork, doing a fairly half-assed job. However, while some things (like the criminal records of people presiding over the project) were a little disturbing, I'm more willing to say that Diebold probably has nothing more malicious in mind than getting as much money as possible and not caring much as to how useful (or dangerous) their work is.

The real problem is that no voting administrator wants to be in the shoes of the Florida people, where questionable ballots exceeded the margin by which Bush won. An electronic form throws away all data other than a simple vote -- it may not be more accurate, but it covers the asses of voting administrators.

The fact that the whole system is much less accountable and more open to abuse and attacks than a physical system is more an issue that not of the involved people (voting officials and Diebold) just don't care about than one that I expect that they intend to personally exploit.

Re:What I would like to know..!

[geobeck]

These ridiculous security holes can only be intentional.

My greatest fear regarding American elections is that Diebold machines will be used for a national vote to repeal the 22nd amendment, then for the following presidential acclimation--I mean, election.

Americans, please, start a grassroots movement to outlaw the use of any electronic, and therefore hackable, voting machines. Look at Canada's election process. Sure, we have only 10% of your population, but we have substantially less than 10% of your election hassles. In Canada, paper ballots are counted manually by Elections Canada volunteers, witnessed at each vote counting station by representatives from all official parties.

And for the love of Mike, start some new political parties! You may turf out the Republicans in 2008, but your Democrats are no prize either!