Posted on 10/28/2008 8:38:12 AM PDT by george76
With Diebold admitting its own machines are utterly insecure, competitor Sequoia is now under the microscope and, after a little quality time with the company's machines, Princeton researchers have filed a 158 page report on the ease of replacing their ROMs and winning yourself an election.
Okay, we know what you're thinking: "Hacking hardware isn't exactly easy when the computer is in a locked box." Amazingly, it is.
A researcher was able to bypass the physical security mechanisms in 13 seconds, despite never having picked a lock before.
Now you're thinking: "But you'd need to do that on hundreds of them!" Not so; once infected that malicious code can spread itself to others, and, with no paper trail and an easily bypassed internal audit system...
(Excerpt) Read more at engadget.com ...
ht comments
Sequoia e-voting machines disturbingly easy to hack.
the machine can be completely compromised by replacing a single ROM chip—a task that they were able to complete in only seven minutes.
Mickey Mouse 86,000,000,000 to 6
E-voting stinks.
In all of these Princeton hacks, they write the GUI.
If they had no access to the operating system, software, and GUI they’d have a much harder time.
Let’s see them hack a machine that someone ELSE set up, and see how they do.
“E-voting stinks.”
Sure does! At the end of the night, to vote al the no-shows, someone has to push the button 9876 times. With paper ballots it’s easier, you can do it a day in advance.
Plus, you can swap a box of ballots easily, with no training.
Wow! We’ve come a long way. In Florida, all you needed to invalidate Bush votes was a piece of stiff wire ( shove it through a stack of ballots through the Gore hole and all the Bush votes suddenly have two votes and are disqualified. The last few in the stack become hanging chads and the last one or two becomes a dimpled chad).
The whole country needs to go to paper ballots - (my town does - small comfort that at least my vote may count)
and purple fingers.
Can we really think this simple fix won’t be done or that the back door allowing for it wasn’t coded in in the first place?
These people haven’t worked this hard for 30+ years to take over the democrat party, to infiltrate our schools and indoctrinate our children - all voting now - etc., to leave the vote to the people.
It’s an evil wind that blows across our country.
Dear God. Save our country.
In my 24 years as an electrical engineer I can tell you with absolute clarity that any electronic system built by one human can be hacked by another human. In most incidences, it’s far easier than most people are aware, provided you have the knowledge and understanding of how such systems work. You would be blown away if you knew what I can do with any cell phone......and these voting machines are rudimentary by comparison in terms of sophistication.....
It’s better than paper ballots where it’s easier to cheat. Plus it’s probably easier to catch someone cheating on an E-vote machine.
Having said that, I do wish they all gave a printout of your vote and then that should be stored separately. Possibly printed with a one-way hash that only a specific machine/precinct can create this way you can trace votes back to a specific machine and prevent someone from just printing up fake votes.
These machines are used in the rural counties in Nevada.
In the rural counties of Nevada, there is a deputy at each polling location to take possession of the machines, the voting cards, you name it - to maintain a complete chain of custody of the voting results.
The deputies are armed with pistols that start with a “4” as the first digit of their caliber.
I’d like to see one of these propeller heads try to actually get into a machine while a deputy is in the room. It would be.... amusing.
They've done this in New Mexico on a regular basis - after vote count, found out how many needed to change outcome and, oh, my, "just found a box of ballots that didn't get counted."
I remember one box that was 'found' in the lady's restroom in New Mexico - and wouldn't you know - just enough to swing the election. Ditto Washington state 4 years ago. Ditto in Maine, several years ago - found out about after election, but, like Wash. state - "oh well, elections over." too bad.
Pray hard. Work harder.
Absolutely true.
That’s why the security issue needs to be addressed with guns. As a EE myself, I’ve come to the conclusion that “electronic security” is both an oxymoron and silly.
I was once in a meeting in Silicon Valley where there were all manner of propeller heads discussing the use of biometrics+passwords as a security mechanism - a combination of “what you possess and what you know.”
After listening to this guy claim that this was high-level security without technical evasion, I grew exasperated and told him it was very easily broken. He demanded to know how. I told him “Pretend I’m holding your choice of a Glock or a 1911 in one hand, and a machete in the other. You can come with me and put your thumbprint on the scanner and tell me what you know, or I can amputate your hand and torture you for the password. Your call.”
He protested that this was unlikely to happen. I said it would absolutely happen if what this security mechanism was protecting was worth the consequences of the action. I also pointed out that there had recently been a murder of someone for about $80 in the area recently, so the amount/importance of what was being protected didn’t have to rise to the level of strategic weapons or Ft. Knox.
Real security ultimately always emanates from the muzzle of a gun. Period, end of discussion.
Here I come to save the day!
Or "find" them on day two of the counting where they were "misplaced", in the trunk of your car.
“E-voting stinks.”
I agree. Around here they have something similar to the Scantron “fill in the bubble” sheets used for tests. You get a ballot, a black magic marker, and all you do is fill in the arrow for who or what you want to vote for. It’s so easy that even a liberal can figure it out (unlike those confusing punch card ballots).
The machines I’ve seen have 2 different displays on them. One is a digital LCD display, and the other is an analog display that shows the total number of ballots processed by the machine. There is also IIRC a paper tabulation that is printed out from the back of the machine.
Combine that with the fact that we’re required to show a picture ID that is matched with the voter rolls, this is probably one of the most secure ways of voting that has multiple redundancies built in for accuracy and security.
As far as these electronic voting machines, just remember that it was the democrats that pushed for them.
And ID required, and a fingerprint on each ballot (use purple ink and kill two birds with one stone). Scan for print matches; if more than one match with a print, both or all are disqualified.
The greater threat to our nation’s security comes not from Dubai and its pro-Western government, but from Venezuela, where software engineers with links to the leftist, anti-American regime of Hugo Chávez are programming electronic voting machines
Consider the lack of confidence Venezuelans have in their voting system. Anti-Chávez groups have such little faith in Smartmatic’s machines that they refuse to run candidates in elections anymore as reports surface of fraud and irregularities from Chávez’s 2004 victory in a recall referendum.
Smartmatic International is owned by a Netherlands corporation, which is in turn owned by a Curacao corporation, which is in turn held by a number of Curacao trusts controlled by proxy holders who represent unnamed investors, almost certainly among them Venezuelans Mugica and Anzola and possibly others.
Why Smartmatic has chosen yet again to abuse the corporate form apparently to conceal the nationality and identity of its true owners is a question that should worry anyone who votes using one of its machines.
http://www.realclearpolitics.com/articles/2006/03/forget_dubai_worry_about_smart.html
Voting by anything other than paper ballot is really insane.
ML/NJ
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