Aviel Rubin, a professor of computer science at Johns Hopkins
University, did the first in-depth analysis of the security flaws in
the source code for Diebold touch-screen machines in 2003.
After studying the latest problem, he said:
"I almost had a heart attack. The implications of this are pretty
astounding."
From The New York Times, 5/12/06:
http://www.nytimes.com/2006/05/12/us/12vote.html?_r=2&oref=slogin&pagewanted=print&oref=slogin
New Fears of Security Risks in Electronic Voting Systems
By MONICA DAVEY
CHICAGO --
With primary election dates fast approaching in many states, officials
in Pennsylvania and California issued urgent directives in recent days
about a potential security risk in their Diebold Election Systems
touch-screen voting machines, while other states with similar equipment
hurried to assess the seriousness of the problem.
"It's the most severe security flaw ever discovered in a voting
system," said Michael I. Shamos, a professor of computer science at
Carnegie Mellon University who is an examiner of electronic voting
systems for Pennsylvania, where the primary is to take place on
Tuesday.
Officials from Diebold and from elections' offices in numerous states
minimized the significance of the risk and emphasized that there were
no signs that any touch-screen machines had been tampered with.
But computer scientists said the problem might allow someone to tamper
with a machine's software, some saying they preferred not to discuss
the flaw at all for fear of offering a roadmap to a hacker.
"This is the barn door being wide open, while people were arguing over
the lock on the front door," said Douglas W. Jones, a professor of
computer science at the University of Iowa, a state where the primary
is June 6.
The latest concern about the touch-screen machines was only the newest
chapter in an emerging political and legal fight around the country
over voting machines.
While some voting officials defend the ease of touch-screens (similar
to A.T.M.'s), some advocacy groups argue that optical scan machines,
using paper ballots, are far more secure.
The wave of high-tech voting machines was prompted by the 2000 election
in Florida, which spotlighted the problems of old-fashioned punch card
ballots.
But the machines that soon followed have spurred division.
Here in Chicago, where voters used both touch-screen and optical-scan
systems in a March primary, it took officials a week to tally all the
votes because of technical problems and human errors, touching off a
flurry of criticism over the Sequoia Voting Systems equipment.
In Maryland this spring, the State House of Delegates passed a bill
that would have scrapped touch-screen machines, but the Senate last
month took no action on the bill, effectively killing the idea.
This week, Voter Action, a nonprofit group, assisted voters in Arizona
in filing for a legal injunction to try to block the state from buying
touch-screen electronic voting systems.
The suit is among several the group says it has pursued, in states
including California, New York and New Mexico.
The new concerns about Diebold's equipment were discovered by Harri
Hursti, a Finnish computer expert who was working at the request of
Black Box Voting Inc., a nonprofit group that has been critical of
electronic voting in the past.
The group issued a report on the findings on Thursday.
Computer scientists who have studied the vulnerability say the flaw
might allow someone with brief access to a voting machine and with
knowledge of computer code to tamper with the machine's software, and
even, potentially, to spread malicious code to other parts of the
voting system.
______________________________________________________
Harry
(see all of Harry Hope's excellent posts as they break, put this link
in your browser, use it, this is a search on google groups, on the
author Harry Hope sorted by date... nothing fancy):
http://groups.google.com/groups?q=&start=0&scoring=d&enc_author=-nIhFBQAAACtBOUGAhN9cSve8yYdFJBuOPANdqfI6prRsqjc7uCt1A&
.
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