Products manufactured by the high technology industry communicate to its customers via their marketing departments. Marketing departments routinely change correct language because they sell the sizzle not the steak. So you are correct, terms are used in different ways at different times. Hell, some of the terms are used so incorrectly, they don't mean anything anymore. "Enterprise" comes to mind.
But in the interest of precision, a read-only-memory (ROM) card is only that. It can't be reprogrammed. A programmable-read-only-memory (PROM) card, on the other hand, can be changed or reprogrammed (just like it says).
Regarding your unnecessary personal attack ~
Give up, the world doesn't care and is never going to conform to your rigid and useless ways of thinking.
This absurd statement is more of a reflection of who and what you are, not me. I grew up when sticks and stones didn't break any bones. Besides, projection is generally limited to flaming liberals.
And as far as your 25 years of experience ~ if you want to compare resumes, I have a hundred dollar bill that mine will blow yours right out of the water.
Care to put a hundred up on PayPal, right now? Best resume wins and we can let our peers in the Forum decide the winner.
Beckwith, I hate to say this, but it doesn't matter if the ROM is an EPROM or not.
This Diebold computer has RAM, which was modified through the TELEPHONE CONNECTOR to let make it resolve a vote different from what was cast by the people.
There was no replacing of an internal BIOS or some other code on a chip. There was also apparently no access given to the Diebold program code, either. This was simply manipulated via a program on a device stuck into the phone port.
So get over your baseless debate. You are the one who brought in the concept of ROM/EPROM and it has nothing to do with that.
Yes, you are right that ROM cannot be changed without changing out that chip. But that has nothing to do with this exploit.
Okay, so I've gone into the report to find out the telephone port aspect of the exploit:
Page 5:
"Before each election, the Diebold central tabulator program, called “GEMS,” defines the races in the election. The optical scan machine is then connected to the GEMS server via an RS-232 serial port connection.
The removable storage (memory card) is placed into the optical scan machine, and GEMS writes information onto the memory card through the optical scan unit.
According to the Diebold optical scan user’s manual, the programming of the memory card can also be done remotely by modem connection over a public telephone network.(7) After the cards have been programmed, they are interchangeable among voting machines with the same or similar firmware version. Therefore a single machine can be used to program all cards needed."
Page 6:
"For removable storage, the AV OS (Diebold Accu-Vote Precinct-Based Optical Scan) that was tested by the author uses standard Epson RBC 40 -pin battery refreshed memory cards. Epson discontinued the product line in late 1998 or early 1999, but compatible cards are still available from third party suppliers. Diebold (then called Global Election Systems) also was forced to change their supplier.(8)
These memory cards can be read and written with any Epson RBC compatible device, like the Cropscan Model 92 DLC, which is commercially available from a Minnesota company, CROPSCAN, Inc.(9) The Cropscan unit was used by the author for this study."
There are other notes listed with the document, available here:
http://www.blackboxvoting.org/BBVreport.pdf
The systems can be remotely exploited via the phone port, essentially providing a remote flash BIOS upgrade, if you will. However, this exploit was apparently done with a compatible memory card, the Epson battery-backed up RAM/EPROM card (apparently similar to the lithium battery backup on our motherboards to keep the system BIOS and clock running the whole time the computers are off).
So I stand partially corrected and partially vindicated. The study, BearWash, was specific to the direct card exploit (although the phone ports exploit comes early in the report). It is not a device used on the telephone port, either, but this could be made.
However, it is literally not a EPROM alone, it is RAM (a minor justification).
In addition, the fact that these machines are programmed in any way like this prior to a vote is scary. There should only be the opportunity to feed it a data-only file for the races and no opportunity to write any votes or overwrite a program in the process.
Optical readers leave a paper trail that can be tabulated. These Diebold machines do not, as evidenced by the report and numerous news articles.
I hope this clarifies things. Beckwith, I apologize for the relevant parts of my comment. I needed to pour over the report BearWash pulled his information from to know the details.