david.bozzi
US voting machines easily rigged: report
Fri Jul 25 17:40:05 2003
208.152.73.189

US voting machines easily rigged: report

Why Bush hasn't appeared worried about how he will get re-elected:

Report Here: http://avirubin.com/vote.pdf

http://www.bestoftheblogs.com/2003_07_24_bestof.html#105905836404872673

Thursday, July 24, 2003
Electronic Voting Fears Confirmed

The first independent analysis of electronic voting machine software has just
been released by the Information Security Institute at Johns Hopkins
University and it is scary as hell. The bottom line finding is that anyone
with a modicum of computer knowledge and $100 worth of equipment could
create a chip-embedded smart card that would allow them to cast as many votes
as they wanted. It would also allow poll workers to alter ballots after they
are cast without being detected.

Voting machine makers have been extremely secretive about their "proprietary"
software. The opportunity to analyze this application came about when
critics of electronic voting discovered the source code on a Diebold Internet
site in January. This is the software used in the Georgia state-wide
elections in 2002. Diebold Election Systems is one of the largest of the
electronic voting machine manufacturers, with about 33,000 voting machines
operating in the United States.

The report is entitled 'Analysis of an Electronic Voting System' by Tadayoshi
Kohno (JHU), Adam Stubblefield (JHU), Aviel Rubin (JHU), and Dan Wallach (Rice
University). The Abstract confirms all the worst fears of critics of
electronic voting machines:

Our analysis shows that this voting system is far below even the most minimal
security standards applicable in other contexts. We highlight several issues
including unauthorized privilege escalation, incorrect use of cryptography,
vulnerabilities to network threats, and poor software development
processes. For example, common voters, without any insider privileges, can
cast unlimited votes without being detected by any mechanisms within the
voting terminal. Furthermore, we show that even the most serious of our
outsider attacks could have been discovered without the source code. In the
face of such attacks, the usual worries about insider threats are not the
only concerns; outsiders can do the damage. That said, we demonstrate that
the insider threat is also quite considerable. We conclude that, as a society,
we must carefully consider the risks inherent in electronic voting, as it
places our very democracy at risk.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

http://www.nytimes.com/2003/07/24/technology/24VOTE.html
July 24, 2003
Computer Voting Is Open to Easy Fraud, Experts Say

By JOHN SCHWARTZ

The software that runs many high-tech voting machines contains serious flaws
that would allow voters to cast extra votes and permit poll workers to alter
ballots without being detected, computer security researchers said yesterday.

"We found some stunning, stunning flaws," said Aviel D. Rubin, technical
director of the Information Security Institute at Johns Hopkins University,
who led a team that examined the software from Diebold Election Systems,
which has about 33,000 voting machines operating in the United States.

The systems, in which voters are given computer-chip-bearing smart cards to
operate the machines, could be tricked by anyone with $100 worth of computer
equipment, said Adam Stubblefield, a co-author of the paper.

"With what we found, practically anyone in the country -- from a teenager on
up -- could produce these smart cards that could allow someone to vote as
many times as they like," Mr. Stubblefield said.

The software was initially obtained by critics of electronic voting, who
discovered it on a Diebold Internet site in January. This is the first
review of the software by recognized computer security experts.

A spokesman for Diebold, Joe Richardson, said the company could not comment in
detail until it had seen the full report. He said that the software on the
site was "about a year old" and that "if there were problems with it, the
code could have been rectified or changed" since then. The company, he said,
puts its software through rigorous testing.

"We're constantly improving it so the technology we have 10 years from now
will
be better than what we have today," Mr. Richardson said. "We're always open to
anything that can improve our systems."

Another co-author of the paper, Tadayoshi Kohno, said it was unlikely that the
company had plugged all of the holes they discovered.

"There is no easy fix," Mr. Kohno said.

The move to electronic voting -- which intensified after the troubled Florida
presidential balloting in 2000 -- has been a source of controversy among
security
researchers. They argue that the companies should open their software to
public
review to be sure it operates properly.

Mr. Richardson of Diebold said the company's voting-machine source code, the
basis of its computer program, had been certified by an independent testing
group. Outsiders might want more access, he said, but "we don't feel it's
necessary to turn it over to everyone who asks to see it, because it is
proprietary."

Diebold is one of the most successful companies in this field. Georgia and
Maryland are among its clients, as are many counties around the country. The
Maryland contract, announced this month, is worth $56 million.

Diebold, based in North Canton, Ohio, is best known as a maker of automated
teller machines. The company acquired Global Election Systems last year and
renamed it Diebold Election Systems. Last year the election unit contributed
more than $110 million in sales to the company's $2 billion in revenue.

As an industry leader, Diebold has been the focus of much of the controversy
over high-tech voting. Some people, in comments widely circulated on the
Internet, contend that the company's software has been designed to allow voter
fraud. Mr. Rubin called such assertions "ludicrous" and said the software's
flaws showed the hallmarks of poor design, not subterfuge.

The list of flaws in the Diebold software is long, according to the paper,
which
is online at avirubin .com/vote.pdf. Among other things, the researchers said,
ballots could be altered by anyone with access to a machine, so that a voter
might think he is casting a ballot for one candidate while the vote is
recorded
for an opponent.

The kind of scrutiny that the researchers applied to the Diebold software
would
turn up flaws in all but the most rigorously produced software, Mr.
Stubblefield
said. But the standards must be as high as the stakes, he said.

"This isn't the code for a vending machine," he said. "This is the code that
protects our democracy."

Still, things that seem troubling in coding may not be as big a problem in the
real world, Mr. Richardson said. For example, counties restrict access to the
voting machines before and after elections, he said. While the researchers
"are
all experts at writing code, they may not have a full understanding of how
elections are run," he said.

But Douglas W. Jones, an associate professor of computer science at the
University of Iowa, said he was shocked to discover flaws cited in Mr. Rubin's
paper that he had mentioned to the system's developers about five years ago
as a
state elections official.

"To find that such flaws have not been corrected in half a decade is awful,"
Professor Jones said.

Peter G. Neumann, an expert in computer security at SRI International, said
the
Diebold code was "just the tip of the iceberg" of problems with electronic
voting systems.

"This is an iceberg that needs to be hacked at a good bit," Mr. Neumann said,
"so this is a step forward."
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• BLACKBOXVOTING.COM — anonymous, Sat Jul 26 18:55