Actually picked up this story from a Macintosh news website — after Googling it on Google News, it’s getting some inside-section play on some of the US newspapers, but nothing in the big sources (NYT, WaPo, networks); wonder if it will.
From MacWorld.co.uk:
Backdoor found in Diebold voting machines
By Robert McMillan
Diebold Election Systems plans to make changes to its electronic voting machines, following the disclosure of a number of serious security flaws in the systems.
On Thursday, the voting watchdog organisation Black Box Voting published a report (PDF) detailing how Diebold’s TS6 and TSx touch-pad voting machines could be compromised by taking advantage of “backdoor” features designed to allow new software to be installed on the systems.
Finnish security researcher Harri Hursti, discovered backdoors in the boot loader software, in the OS, and in the Ballot Station software that it runs to tabulate votes.
Rear-access technology
“These are built-in features, all three of them,” said Black Box Voting Founder Bev Harris. If a malicious person had access to a Diebold machine, the back doors could be exploited to falsify election results on the system, she said.
A Diebold spokesman did not dispute Hursti’s findings, but said that Black Box Voting was making too much of the matter because the systems are intended to remain in the hands of trusted election officials.
“What they’re proposing as a vulnerability is actually a functionality of the system,” said spokesman David Bear. “Instead of recognising the advantages of the technology, we keep ringing up ‘what if’ scenarios that serve no purpose other than to confuse and in some instances frighten voters.”
Now, why did this show up on Mac news sites? Well, according to the article, Diebold’s programming uses a variant of Microsoft’s Windows CE operating system…and no Mac site worth its processors passes up a chance to trash Microsoft’s operating systems. I’m not super familiar with Windows CE (other than awareness — most Windows CE products are, AFAIK, incompatible with Macs so I’ve never thought about purchasing one), so I’m not sure if that affects the overall security of the machines, but the presence of these “back doors” is troubling. If they were only for testing, why were they not closed off or removed after the testing process, when the machines went live?
Diebold claims to be addressing this situation by installing cryptographic “keys” to ensure only “authorized software” is installed. But that doesn’t stop the CEO of Diebold, who promised to do everything he could to re-elect Bush, from installing something, or having someone “authorized” go in. Personally, I don’t trust Diebold as far as I could throw it.
Fortunately, there are companies that have demonstrated their new machines, which reportedly produce a paper receipt for each vote. The receipts go into a sealed box, so no one touches it, but there is a paper trail in case a recount is necessary. These machines will be available for the California primary on June 6, apparently; I’ll find out when I go to vote here in Santa Clara County.
Democracy isn’t worth much when the system’s rigged…how can we claim to be bringing democracy to the world when we don’t have it here?
Let’s keep an eye on this —
I’d post it at the Orange Empire, but I’d probably get banned…
I just saw a fluff piece on local tv about the new electronic voting machines in a nearby county. I couldn’t resist a little rant at the tv. This is a great catch, Cali Scribe.
Ain’t that sweet? ..the systems are intended to remain in the hands of trusted election officials.
Trusted by whom? How about an auditable system – no need for trust in what could potentially be corrupted public officials. We’ve seen it so many times already – the system is being abused.
like the Ohio Secretary of State…who was also the chairperson of Bush/Cheney ’04 in Ohio…
.
… has been ousted in 2005!
"But I will not let myself be reduced to silence."▼ ▼ ▼ MY DIARY
Unless the user gets to see and verify the receipt before it goes into the sealed box, this is no better than the Diebold system.
about the California program, the box is clear; the voter is able to see their receipt when it goes in…I’ll find out for sure next month. The company is Sequoia Systems, which doesn’t have quite the bad rep of Diebold…
Diebold Built-in Security Vulnerability – Major Threat to Honest Elections, by SluggoJD went into the Harris report in detail the other day. Here’s what some academic computer scientists have to say:
Diebold has known about this for at least two years now:
There is no California program. California’s voting machines vary by county.
As of last Oct, the following CA counties had no paper trail:
Alameda, Imperial, Inyo, Kings, Merced, Mono, Monterey, Napa, Orange, Plumas, Riverside, San Bernadino, Santa Clara, Shasta, Tehama
They are now required to have some sort of paper trail to enable a manual recount for the June 2006 elections.
A few weeks ago . . .
I keep reading troubling reports about the Sequoia machines. Here’s one negative finding.
According to the CA Secretary of State:
Here in Sacramento, we use an Opti-Scan machine & still get to fill in little boxes with an inkpen. Here’s a list (pdf) of which voting systems are used in each of California’s counties. (Here’s another list that isn’t a pdf file.)
This is nuts. They are using a tactic called “security by obscurity” — meaning they think that if you hide your code, vulnerabilities won’t be found, and if they are found, you don’t talk about them because people will exploit them.
Most computer professionals have little but scorn for security by obscurity, even though many companies tend to employ it (koffkoffWindowskoff).
You don’t solve these problems by sweeping the vulnerability back under the rug. A competent social engineer could get his mitts on a system with little trouble, probably find the vulnerability fairly easily (either alone or with the help of his black-hat hacker friends), and presto, they own every vote box of that type.
I want to reiterate my long-held belief that electronic voting is not evil, and that a properly designed system would make our voting process more efficient and less prone to error. However, this is not that system. A properly-designed system would merely allow you to select your votes on screen and print your ballot, thereby removing the possibility of hanging chads or overfilled ovals. It might tabulate votes, but its count would not be official — a second scanner system (based on the same technology used in supermarkets) would do the actual counting, and the paper ballots would be the final authority on the election.
Oh yeah, and its code would be available and open for public inspection. In fact any vote software system should be handed to a group of grey-hat hackers and told they would be paid bounties for each serious exploit they find.
But until then, get rid of the present crop of machines. I don’t think there’s one I would trust my vote to. (In fact I vote absentee, which is allowed and in fact encouraged in the Evergreen State.)
I would approve of electronic voting, as long as it also produced a PAPER trail. Otherwise, votes have been stolen before right President Gord.
Best way to demonstrate the flaws in electronic voting?
Hack the system ourselves and get Steven Colbert and John Stewart elected through write-in votes.
Can you imagine the speeches during SOTU? Or diplomacy visits from foreign dignitaries?
Forget that. I want Colbert as RNC chair. He’d have them chasing their tails so fast they’d get dizzy.
Further surprise: Water wet! Sky blue!
There are no wise few. Every aristocracy that has ever existed has behaved, in all essential points, exactly like a small mob. — G. K. Chesterton, “Heretics”, 1905