Posted on 09/16/2006 9:11:02 PM PDT by upchuck
Edward Felten, a Princeton University computer science professor, along with two of his graduate students on Wednesday stirred up controversy surrounding the usage of electronic voting (e-voting) machines in U.S. elections by releasing a paper that claims they were able to hack the machines and upload malicious programs that could potentially modify vote tabulation, as well as shut down the machines, the Associated Press reports via Forbes.com.
Felten posted the paper on the Princeton website, and it describes how he and his students obtained and tested a Diebold AccuVote TS e-voting machine and found a handful of vulnerabilities, including a flaw that allowed them to introduce a virus that could spread potentially harmful programs to various voting machines by “piggybacking” on software updates or data file transfers, according to the AP. They said they were even able to cover their tracks so modifications could not be detected by auditors, the AP reports.
Mark Radke, Diebold Election Systems’ marketing director, said the report was inaccurate because Felten and his team tested a machine with outdated software and security safeguards, the AP reports. He also said many of Felten’s suggested fixes had already been added to the system, according to the AP.
“I’m concerned we weren’t contacted to educate these people on where our current technology stands,” Radke said, according to the AP.
Radke also noted that Felten hadn’t submitted his paper to peers for review, as is often the case with such research; however, Felten defended his actions by saying he wanted to make the information available to the public before the upcoming November midterm elections, the AP reports. The elections will determine the makeup of the U.S. House of Representatives, as well as a number of Senate seats and governor posts, according to the AP.
Roughly 80 percent of U.S. voters will likely use an electronic voting process in said elections, the AP reports.
The Diebold AccuVote TS—and its updated counterpart, the AccuVote TSx—are two of a handful of machines used in the United States during elections, according to the AP. Though Felten did not get his hands on the newer model, he said he suspected many of same flaws could be found, the AP reports.
Diebold and a number of additional e-voting machine vendors have already been hit with lawsuits over their machines’ potential to be hacked and skew election results, according to the AP.
Though there have been other research papers released that claim to document flaws in e-voting machines, Felten said he was the first to obtain a machine and perform intensive vetting, the AP reports.
Felten and his team said they accessed a memory card slot and power button on the Diebold machine’s side panel by picking a lock on the door, after which they installed malicious software, according to the AP.
And here's a link to Professor Felten's paper.
Food for thought.
How long did it take to do it? If the right people had time with any voting system in existance they could change the result.
Trash the machines and revert to the WRITTEN BALLOT!!!! This method is tried and true and simple.
From the paper's summary
Anyone who has physical access to a voting machine, or to a memory card that will later be inserted into a machine, can install said malicious software using a simple method that takes as little as one minute. In practice, poll workers and others often have unsupervised access to the machines.
If this guy is not a super-partisan Jackass who will cooperate anyway and for free, he will be paid millions by Clinton, Carville, and Ickes to teach Jackasses how to better steal elections.
Hmm, isn't what they did illegal?
Kind of like "well, Mr. Air Marshall, I was just testing the security of the airlines you see, when I decided to slip this gun in my carryon."
Seems to me the Drive By Media is setting the groundwork just in case the Dims do not win back the House: The old playbook excuse of vote fraud / vote manipulation / vote suppression.
Do they realize they're probably hurting the Dems chances more than Reps? Let's face it, who slashes tires and registers dead people? Fixing the voting "problem" would probably end up with a Republican sweep.
Maybe if every voter had a voter ID card with a PIN number, voting machines did not go unsupervised and had better freakin' locks, that would help. However, any combination of this is probably "disenfranchisement."
Uh, don't forget that old standby, "disenfranchisement."
LOL!
I'm pretty sure Diebold voting systems are available for any entity that wants to purchase them; in addition to being used for government elections, I believe they are also sometimes used for corporate or union elections. Since Edward Felton wasn't tampering with any machine used for actual elections, I see no criminal activity. Further, even if his "virus" got into the wild, it would be unlikely to have any effect unless there were a real election between participants named "George Washington" and "Benedict Arnold".
The fundamental question is why any machine used for voting stores software and operating parameters on alterable memory, and stores ballots on erasable memory. Forbidding that would greatly enhance the security of voting machines.
I don't care who is in power; I don't want a machine which allows operating parameters and votes to be altered without a trace. There are easy ways to avoid such weakness, and I see little reason not to employ them (using one-time-usable media for storing votes would increase election costs slightly, but the required cards could easily and profitably be produced for under $5 per machine per election.
That is what I think, too.
These voting machines are the result of the Dem attack on all the existing voting techniques after the Gore debacle. Now they have systems in place across the country which they can attack as insecure and inaccurate when any election doesn't go their way. Watch and see, this will even happen in elections which are not close.
You've got it half-right, but your conclusion is totally wrong.
The dems have stolen votes for years, primarily in urban inner-city districts. In Gore's hysterical attempt to grab the election from Bush, his people decided that bringing up the "vote stealing" card could get them over the top, but by putting that issue on the table they knew (and accepted the risk anyway) that the republicans would respond by promoting voting reform.
In other words, Gore traded a long-term Dem advantage for a short-term gambit -- and he failed.
Predictably, voting reform progressed in the tears after Florida 2000. Now the Dems are facing the results of their Florida tantrum -- and they don't like it.
So -- they are attacking the machine-reforms every chance they get. It is WRONG that machines are more susceptible to tampering. That is 100% wrong. With paper ballots, once you destroy the evidence, it is destroyed. With computerized machines, there likely will be evidence of the tampering left behind.
http://www.powerlineblog.com/archives/011255.php
"Democratic Voter Fraud, Intimidation Confirmed"
http://michellemalkin.com/archives/001346.htm
"ANOTHER SMELLY DEMOCRAT VOTE SCANDAL"
http://billhobbs.com/hobbsonline/cat_voter_fraud.html
"Voter Fraud:"
http://www.politicalgateway.com/main/columns/read.html?col=434
"Report Documents Massive Democratic Voter Fraud"
[Part one of a two-part series.
All reasonable people know it -- it was well documented by various media sources throughout the 2004 election and now we have the concrete proof: Democrats and their operatives were far and away more involved in voter intimidation, fraud, suppression and, yes, disenfranchisement, than Republicans. It's not even close. But don't take our word for it liberals, read the 368-page report by the non-partisan American Center for Voting Rights yourself.]
Tampering with paper-ballot elections is likely to leave evidence unless the tampering takes the form of outright physical substitution. Electronic equipment that uses rewritable media may be altered temporarily, with the alterations removing themselves, without leaving any meaningful trace.
The proper solution would be to forbid the use of rewritable media for storing code, votes, or election parameters. Nobody, however, seems interested in that.
Predictably, voting reform progressed in the tears after Florida 2000. Now the Dems are facing the results of their Florida tantrum -- and they don't like it.
Here in California the "reform" was pushed almost exclusively by Dems. It would never succeed here if it were a Republican strategy.
It is WRONG that machines are more susceptible to tampering. That is 100% wrong.
I generally agree that the computer ballots are not more susceptible to tampering. What is going on, IMO, is the promotion of a perception that the machines are more susceptible so that if an election doesn't go their way they can challenge the results. That's exactly what Francine Busby tried here in the 51st district (my district) even though the machines were only used for the visually impaired. (They will be used by everyone in November).
Thankfully, the judge here ruled that there must be evidence of tampering, not just a possibility of tampering. Can we trust liberal judges in the rest of the country to be so reasonable?
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.