HackingDemocracy
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Rolling Stone interviews a Diebold whistleblower
In what is perhaps the most astonishing turn of events in the ongoing Diebold fiasco, a new article in the latest issue of Rolling Stone -- with extensive information direct from a named former company consultant -- makes one of the most damning cases against the embattled company. The article weaves an elaborate tale of how Diebold had at the very least some extremely skeezy deals signed in 2002 with the state of Georgia, which allowed Diebold to replace all existing voting equipment, and to speed things up by the fall election: "The company was authorized to put together ballots, program machines and train poll workers across the state - all without any official supervision." As if that weren't enough, days before the primaries, the president of Diebold's election unit, Bob Urosevich, personally distributed a patch to the elections software. The article goes on: "Georgia law mandates that any change made in voting machines be certified by the state. But thanks to Cox's [Georgia's Secretary of State] agreement with Diebold, the company was essentially allowed to certify itself." Before the election, the two Democratic candidates in the two major races (for one Senate seat and the state governorship) had been ahead in the polls, and on Election Day, Republicans won the two races by a slim margin -- and given that no paper trail exists there is no way to prove or disprove that the election wasn't tampered with in some way. And you wonder why we continue to insist on paper ballots for the time being?
Open your Diebold AccuVote-TS with a minibar key
Remember those guys from Princeton who recently dissected a Diebold voting machine and wrote a serious academic paper laying the smack downon our favorite shady e-voting company? The plot thickens with those Jersey brainiacs: after giving a presentation to some computer science colleagues last week, Prof. Ed Felten was approached by Chris Tengi, a member of the department's technical staff, who pointed out that the key that opens the AccuVote-TS voting machine is very similar to a key that he has at home. Tengi's key opened the voting machine, and upon further investigation, the Princeton posse discovered that both keys are actually a common office furniture type used for hotel minibars, electronic equipment and jukeboxes. Furthermore, said keys can easily be bought on eBay or from various online retailers. So, all you need to hack Diebold's crackerjack security is to spend a little cash on these keys, bring 'em to your next local election along with a cheap-o flash drive, and you can easily open the lock that houses that Diebold memory card while you're in the voting booth -- good times, hey? If your locality uses these machines, you may want to write your Congressional representative and your county authorities to alert them to this, erm, "feature" -- better yet, buy them one of these keys and send it along with your letter, inviting them to test it out for themselves![Via Boing Boing]
Researchers show Diebold voting machines unsecure, citizens shocked
We're all for hacking stuff, generally, but hacking democracy for malicious purposes is just plain uncool. While no one's definitively proven that such a scenario has ever actually happened in real elections, vote-hacking remains a distinct possibility, given the state of our electronic voting equipment. If you were unconvinced the last time we covered this, of just how shoddy these Diebold voting machines are, here's another arrow in our quiver: Princeton University researchers have taken apart a Diebold machine, examined it from every angle, written a new paper on its flaws and have come to the following conclusions: 1) Malicious code "can steal votes with little if any risk of detection." 2) Said code can be installed in one minute or less. 3) The Dieblod machines run Windows CE 3.0 -- so, they're susceptible to viruses. 4) Some problems would require the entire replacing of hardware, yet another security risk. Still though, we would love to see a debate between the two candidates in this fictitious election: George Washington and Benedict Arnold.[Via Boing Boing]
Diebold Voting Machine hacked in four minutes flat
It's an old adage in politics that you need truckloads of money to get elected. Apparently you can now buy an election for what you'd spend in a few days on cups of coffee. Black Box Voting found that given $12 in tools, four minutes, and a little determination, you can access a Diebold voting machine's memory card, remove and replace it without a trace. This new development really isn't all that surprising given that it's been shown that these machines can be hacked in more than one way, even by monkeys. Concerned citizens, just switch to absentee paper ballots from now on -- it may be low-tech, but it's a hell of a lot more secure going the "old-fashioned" way.[Via Slashdot]
