Black Box Voting Report on Diebold - Grade: F for Complete Failure

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http://www.opednews.com/articles/opedne_black_bo_051214_black_box_voting_rep.htm

 

 

OpEdNews.com

 

Original Article at

http://www.opednews.com/articles/opedne_black_bo_051214_black_box_voting_rep.htm

 

December 14, 2005

 

Black Box Voting Report on Diebold Voting Machine Test

 

Grade: " F " for Complete Failure

 

By Black Box Voting

 

Wed. December 14, 2005: Due to contractual non-performance and

security design issues, Leon County (Florida) supervisor of elections

Ion Sancho has announced that he will never again use Diebold in an

election. He has requested funds to replace the Diebold system from

the county. On Tuesday, the most serious " hack " demonstration to date

took place in Leon County. The Diebold machines succumbed quickly to

alteration of the votes. This comes on the heels of the resignation of

Diebold CEO Wally O'Dell, and the announcement that a stockholder's

class action suit has been filed against Diebold by Scott & Scott.

Further " hack " testing on additional vulnerabilities is tentatively

scheduled before Christmas in the state of California.

 

Finnish security expert Harri Hursti, together with Black Box Voting,

demonstrated that Diebold made misrepresentations to Secretaries of

State across the nation when Diebold claimed votes could not be

changed on the " memory card " (the credit-card-sized ballot box used by

computerized voting machines.

 

A test election was run in Leon County on Tuesday with a total of

eight ballots. Six ballots voted " no " on a ballot question as to

whether Diebold voting machines can be hacked or not. Two ballots,

cast by Dr. Herbert Thompson and by Harri Hursti voted " yes "

indicating a belief that the Diebold machines could be hacked.

 

At the beginning of the test election the memory card programmed by

Harri Hursti was inserted into an Optical Scan Diebold voting machine.

A " zero report " was run indicating zero votes on the memory card. In

fact, however, Hursti had pre-loaded the memory card with plus and

minus votes.

 

The eight ballots were run through the optical scan machine. The

standard Diebold-supplied " ender card " was run through as is normal

procedure ending the election. A results tape was run from the voting

machine.

 

Correct results should have been: Yes:2 ; No:6

 

However, just as Hursti had planned, the results tape read: Yes:7 ; No:1

 

The results were then uploaded from the optical scan voting machine

into the GEMS central tabulator, a step cited by Diebold as a

protection against memory card hacking. The central tabulator is the

" mother ship " that pulls in all votes from voting machines. However,

the GEMS central tabulator failed to notice that the voting machines

had been hacked.

 

The results in the central tabulator read:

 

Yes:7 ; No:1

 

This videotaped testing session was witnessed by Black Box Voting

investigators Bev Harris and Kathleen Wynne, Florida Fair Elections

Coalition Director Susan Pynchon, security expert Dr. Herbert

Thompson, and Susan Bernecker, a former candidate for New Orleans city

council who videotaped Sequoia-brand touch-screen voting machines in

her district recording vote after vote for the wrong candidate.

 

The Hursti Hack requires a moderate level of inside access. It is,

however, accomplished without being given any password and with the

same level of access given thousands of poll workers across the USA.

It is a particularly dangerous exploit, because it changes votes in a

one-step process that will not be detected in any normal canvassing

procedure, it requires only a single a credit-card sized memory card,

any single individual with access to the memory cards can do it, and

it requires only a small piece of equipment which can be purchased off

the Internet for a few hundred dollars.

 

One thousand two hundred locations in the U.S. and Canada use Diebold

voting machines. In each of these locations, typically three people

have a high level of inside access. Temporary employees also often

have brief access to loose memory cards as machines are being prepared

for elections. Poll workers sometimes have a very high level of inside

access. National elections utilize up to two million poll workers,

with hundreds or thousands in a single jurisdiction.

 

Many locations in the U.S. ask poll workers to take voting machines

home with them with the memory cards inside. San Diego County (Calif)

sent 713 voting machines/memory cards home with poll workers for its

July 26 election, and King County (Wash.) sent over 500 voting

machines home with poll workers before its Nov. 8 election.

 

Memory cards are held in a compartment protected by a small plastic

seal. However, these simple seals can be defeated, and Hursti has

found evidence that the memory card can be reprogrammed without

disturbing the seal by using a telephone modem port on the back of the

machine.

 

The Hursti Hack, referred to as " the mother of all security holes " was

first exposed in a formal report on July 4.

(http://www.blackboxvoting.org/bbvreport.pdf).

 

Diebold has insisted to county and state election officials that

despite Hursti's demonstration, changing votes on its memory cards is

impossible. (Public records from Diebold, including threat letter to

Ion Sancho:

 

http://www.bbvforums.org/forums/messages/2197/10535.html)

 

On Oct. 17, 2005 Diebold Elections Systems Research and Development

chief Pat Green specifically told the Cuyahoga County (Ohio) board of

elections during a $21 million purchasing session that votes cannot be

changed using only a memory card. (Video of Pat Green:

http://www.bbvforums.org/forums/messages/2197/14298.html) Over the

objections of Cuyahoga County citizens, and relying on the veracity of

Diebold's statements, the board has chosen to purchase the machines.

 

According to Public Records obtained by Black Box Voting, Diebold has

promulgated misrepresentations about both the Hursti Hack and another

kind of hack by Dr. Herbert Thompson to secretaries of state, and to

as many as 800 state and local elections officials.

 

 

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