Computer Voting Is Open to Easy Fraud, Experts Say

[papau]

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



From ABC Note summary of NYTimes Computer Voting Is Open to Easy Fraud, Experts Say link above : Diebold is a blue chip voting software company responsible for programming about 33,000 ballot casting machines across this land of ours. In the first large test of its software "by recognized computer security experts," reports the New York Times , "serious flaws that would allow voters to cast extra votes and permit poll workers to alter ballots without being detected" were discovered. "'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." "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.

And from the NYT article: ….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."

Also info at:

http://www.ajc.com/news/content/news/0703/24votemachines.html http://cronus.com/electionfraud/efresources.asp http://slashdot.org/articles/03/07/24/153258.shtml?tid=103&tid=126&tid=128&tid=99 http://slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=72311&threshold=1&commentsort=0&tid=103&tid=126&tid=128&tid=99&mode=thread&pid=6523238#6524050

[otohara]

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