More info about how easy it is to hack a Diebold machine. Scary!
Posted on 01/21/2006 10:03:32 PM PST by neverdem
In Controlled Test, Results Are Manipulated in Florida System
As the Leon County supervisor of elections, Ion Sancho's job is to make sure voting is free of fraud. But the most brazen effort lately to manipulate election results in this Florida locality was carried out by Sancho himself.
Four times over the past year Sancho told computer specialists to break in to his voting system. And on all four occasions they did, changing results with what the specialists described as relatively unsophisticated hacking techniques. To Sancho, the results showed the vulnerability of voting equipment manufactured by Ohio-based Diebold Election Systems, which is used by Leon County and many other jurisdictions around the country.
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.
Then, in a warehouse a few blocks from his office in downtown Tallahassee, 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."
Diebold and some officials have criticized Sancho's experiments and said his conclusions about the vulnerability of electronic voting systems are unfounded.
What Sancho did "is analogous to if I gave you the keys to my house and told you when I was gone," said David Bear, a Diebold spokesman. As Bear sees it, Sancho's experiment involved giving hackers "complete unfettered access"...
(Excerpt) Read more at washingtonpost.com ...
Those of us trapped in 56K dialup HELL really appreciate it!
I think I favor a printout for each vote that could manually be recounted.
You're welcome. I usually try to link to the Printer Friendly versions. Some websites don't offer them, .e.g NY Post.
Yeah, the NY Post is a problem. They use cookies in order to prevent us from linking to the pf page.
Bummer.
They have a generic URL that's only good for printing hard copies. This is what you get when you click on Printer Friendly:
http://www.nypost.com/php/pfriendly/pfriendly_new.php
The WaPo seems to have picked it up from the Leon County site word for word.
Ion Sanchez is a partisan hack for the Dimwits. The break-ins were done by giving physical access to the machines.
I bet I can break into your house if you give me the keys to the front door.
Elections are usually controlled by local election boards with rules set by the state. The Democrats best chance for getting back in power is through election fraud. Regardless of how they did it they could do it again after the next election.
Stalin said it doesn't matter who votes, only who counts the votes.
Old media laying the foundation of excuses for when the lose again in November. "We never lose.We get cheated." is coming up.
"More info about how easy it is to hack a Diebold machine. Scary!"
Diebold is one of two main manufacturers for ATM machines {for more than 40 years} and only recently got into the voting machine business. They decided to get into that business because they built very secure components to sytems that demand security. Do you worry about electronic deposits or withdrawl of money from an ATM? How about using you credit and/or debit card at the gas station or any store?
The "tests" were cooking the books. Anyone who physically gets into a memory card can change the program and alter the results. The Diebold system is nothing more than a computer system. Security is a combination of events, but one is denial of access. By letting someone inside of your house and then complaining that your burglar alarm didn't work is akin to this test.
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.