A Good Job Brownie Diebold Moment

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S

Mon, 23 Jan 2006 15:35:12 EST

A " Good Job Brownie " Diebold Moment

 

 

 

graph and then article below. Of course this is daily kos so it is

going to show liberal voting, but perhaps the liberals are finally

figuring it out - that not only was 2000 stolen from us but so was

2004. Any naysayers, please read this, especially that last paragraph.

 

Some say there was too much evidence pointing to OJ and that is what

lost the case perhaps...confusing, complicated, etc. Some even think

OJ could not have been that stupid to leave his blood in a trail

leading from Brentwood to Rockingham. Some said that maybe OJ went for

tests at the hospital and someone who worked there got OJ's blood and

sprinkled it at the crime scene (and they took OJ's shoes and walked

in them the same distance OJ walks and so what there were only a few

of those gloves sold and OJ happened to have them, and the bloody sock

on the floor - well, someone broke into the house also, and then the

blood in the locked car...they put that there too and broke into that

also, and Fuhrman, the bad racist cop (which he might be -- but in

this case, OJ was so stupid that he didn't need anyone racist LOL)

stole the glove that someone sprinkled with the blood. When you ask

how OJ got a cut at the same time someone stole his blood and parked

his car in a different place than he ever parked it in his life and

why Kato heard noise behind the air conditioner and then OJ appeared

and that happens to also be where the glove was found matching OJ,

Nicole and Ron's blood on it -- well, as they say -- that's not OJ's

blood, but if it is... LOLOL

 

 

Do you believe that adequate security measures are in place for e-voting?

 

Yes 15 votes - 1 %

I don't know 5 votes - 0 %

No 1140 votes - 97 %

Don't care 5 votes - 0 %

 

Great answer by Diebold

by beerm

Mon Jan 23, 2006 at 10:16:13 AM PDT

 

A particularly interesting article in ComputerWorld: Q & A: E-voting

systems hacker sees `particularly bad' security issues

 

In this article Herbert Thompson, director of research at Wilmington,

Mass.-based Security Innovation, talks about e-voting security.

 

Can you tell us about some of your e-voting machine hacking

activities? On Tuesday, Dec. 13, we conducted a hack of the Diebold

AccuVote optical scan device. I wrote a five-line script in Visual

Basic that would allow you to go into the central tabulator and change

any vote total you wanted, leaving no logs.

 

* beerm's diary :: ::

*

 

Five lines of Visual Basic is incredible. The fact that you can upload

VB programs on the memory card and have them executed means that not

only are the e-voting machines insecure from a software standpoint but

that they can never be secure because the security is based upon

external controls and is not a feature of the software or of the

machine. The entire idea that you could write a secure software

program that accepts modified VB code at runtime is truly a Brownie

moment.

 

An article in Sunday's Washington Post further details the hacking of

Diebold machines:

 

Sancho's most recent demonstration was last month. Harri Hursti, a

computer security expert from Finland, manipulated the " memory card "

that records the votes of ballots run through an optical scanning machine

 

...Sancho and seven other people held a referendum. The question

on the ballot

 

" Can the votes of this Diebold system be hacked using the memory

card? "

 

Two people marked yes on their ballots, and six no. The optical

scan machine read the ballots, and the data were transmitted to a

final tabulator. The result? Seven yes, one no.

 

" Was it possible for a disgruntled employee to do this and not

have the elections administrator find out? " Sancho asked. " The answer

was yes

 

In the ComputerWorld Article, Thompson avoids the political issue to

try and hit home his point that this is really bad software:

 

Is e-voting security a political issue? I'm strictly an

independent person donating my time. It's not political. Bad software

is the issue. I'm a software security guy. I see a lot of bad

software. All software has security vulnerability -- this is just

particularly bad.

 

The best part of reading both articles is the Diebold response. In

both cases rather than providing any substantial response, Diebold

attacks Leon County Supervisor of Elections, Ion Sancho for conducting

the tests.

 

From ComputerWorld:

 

Diebold Responds

 

Diebold has publicly denounced the Leon County tests as being

invalid. In fact, the vendor contended that Leon County Elections

Supervisor Ion Sancho's decision to sponsor the hacking attempts were

potential violations of licensing agreements and intellectual property

rights. In a letter to Sancho on June 8, Diebold said Sancho had

committed a " very foolish and irresponsible act. "

 

From the Washington Post:

 

Diebold and some officials have criticized Sancho's experiments

and said his conclusions about the vulnerability of electronic voting

systems are unfounded.

 

This is a response truly worthy of (or perhaps even written by) george

w. bush/karl rove.

 

Note to Diebold: Sancho is doing his job, you are not!

 

In the end, some may believe that stories of vote manipulation in past

elections may be conspiricy theories not worth pursuing. In test after

test though it has been demonstrated that vote manipulation is easily

possible. Continuing to believe that vote manipulation will not happen

is wishful thinking, not reasoning.