Diebold Voting Machines Vulnerable to Virus Attack

mcgrew writes "PC world is reporting that Diebold's super-popular voting machines are coming under even more scrutiny. A security review has revealed that they are simply 'not secure enough to guarantee a trustworthy election.' This is according to a report from the University of California Berkley, who did a two-month top-to-bottom review of all California e-voting systems. That's a subject we've discussed before, but Diebold's setup is truly unsettling. An attacker with access to a single machine could disrupt or change the outcome of an entire election using viruses. From the article: 'The report warned that a paper trail of votes cast is not sufficient to guarantee the integrity of an election using the machines. "Malicious code might be able to subtly influence close elections, and it could disrupt elections by causing widespread equipment failure on election day," it said. The source-code review went on to warn that commercial antivirus scanners do not offer adequate protection for the voting machines. "They are not designed to detect virally propagating malicious code that targets voting equipment and voting software," it said.' Oddly, my state of Illinois, long known for election fraud, has paper trails (at least in my county) and according to Black Box Voting doesn't use Diebold anywhere."

Comments

It is not about making it secure

[WindBourne]

It is about having another revenue stream. After all, how much would either major party be willing to pay to win a governorship or a presidency? They have already shown that spending 10's of millions on a state election is nothing. Now, they can spend it and be guaranteed of having a 10-20% boost in the outcome. In a normal year, that is enough to win the election. For last year and next, it will not.