Critical Security Hole Found in Diebold Machines

ckswift writes "From security expert Bruce Schneier's blog, a major security hole has been found in Diebold voting machines." From the article: "The hole is considered more worrisome than most security problems discovered on modern voting machines, such as weak encryption, easily pickable locks and use of the same, weak password nationwide. Armed with a little basic knowledge of Diebold voting systems and a standard component available at any computer store, someone with a minute or two of access to a Diebold touch screen could load virtually any software into the machine and disable it, redistribute votes or alter its performance in myriad ways."

Funny isn't it?

[Trigun]

Diebold can make a box that handles your money with no issues. They make a voting machine that is atrocious and faulty. Goes to show where priorities lie across the board.

How this bug was found

[DingerX]

Anyone else think this is sweet?

A Finnish computer expert working with Black Box Voting, a nonprofit organization critical of electronic voting, found the security hole in March after Emery County, Utah, was forced by state officials to accept Diebold touch screens, and a local elections official let the expert examine the machines.

That's right. We've seen this before [slashdot.org].

Turns out Diebold has a strong interest in keeping their security systems proprietary.

O'Dell Resigned for that Reason

[eldavojohn]

I believe that O'Dell resigned [usatoday.com].

As the article you quoted states:

The Aug. 14 letter from Walden O'Dell, chief executive of Diebold Inc. - who has become active in the re-election effort of President Bush - prompted Democrats this week to question the propriety of allowing O'Dell's company to calculate votes in the 2004 presidential election.

O'Dell attended a strategy pow-wow with wealthy Bush benefactors - known as Rangers and Pioneers - at the president's Crawford, Texas, ranch earlier this month. The next week, he penned invitations to a $1,000-a-plate fund-raiser to benefit the Ohio Republican Party's federal campaign fund - partially benefiting Bush - at his mansion in the Columbus suburb of Upper Arlington.

And as USA Today reported:

"The board of directors and Wally mutually agreed that his decision to resign at this time for personal reasons was in the best interest of all parties," said John Lauer, Diebold's non-executive chairman of the board.

The announcement was made after the stock market closed. Diebold stock fell nearly 2%, or 73 cents, to $37 in after-hours trading. The stock has traded between $33.10 and $57.81 in the past year.

Re:It's not a bug, it's a feature!

[Tim Doran]

Can you back up your claim about the geographic locations of Diebold machines? What about machines made by Triad systems: http://www.truthout.org/docs_04/121604Z.shtml [truthout.org], or http://www.truthout.org/docs_04/121604Z.shtml [truthout.org]

The 2004 election in Ohio is a black mark on America's democracy: http://www.whatreallyhappened.com/2004votefraud_oh io.html [whatreallyhappened.com]

The Diebold suspicions are difficult to prove (and I don't have time to dig for info right now) but the Ohio election itself was a disgrace. That's not a "liberal urban legend", it's well-documented fact.

Re:It's not a bug, it's a feature!

[tassii]

This is yet another liberal urban legend people like to spread around that Diebold somehow tampered with the election. Please stop spreading this FUD.

Unfortunately not FUD. There are documented cases where Diebold's machines subtracted one out of every 100 votes for a democratic candidate. Its only been caught on minor elections and other irregularites with Diebold's machines. From California:

http://www.verifiedvotingfoundation.org/downloads/ resources/documents/ElectronicsInRecentElections.p df [verifiedvo...dation.org]

"At least one voter was able to vote twice on her "smart card", and 10 votes were inexplicably lost.

John Pilch, a retired insurance agent who worked as a polling place inspector in San Carlos, said that when polls closed at 8 p.m. Tuesday, the number of people who signed the voter log differed from the number of ballots counted by computers.

"We lost 10 votes, and the Diebold technician who was there had no explanation," said Pilch, who registered complaints with elections officials, his county supervisor and several others. "She kept looking at the tapes."

At least 250 polls opened late because poll workers were unable to start up the machines, so hundreds, perhaps thousands, of people were turned away - many of them disenfranchised because they were unable to return to the polls at a later time that day"

As well as been posted here: http://politics.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=04/11/ 16/1737228 [slashdot.org]

Re:Black Box Voting & The Details

[freedom_india]

I assume that in India, the manual labor required to count all the paper ballots is cheaper than it would be in the U.S.

India switched to electronic voting machines 12 years back. The last 2 General Elections and about 10 state elections have been with electronic machines.

Only difference: Our voting machines are two part and have an embedded ROM which can store 8000 votes each.

And it costs 1/20 of the cost of a Diebold.

Oh india tried to sell condoleeza the voting machines, but was brusquely turned down.

Re:What I would like to know..!

[Coryoth]

The problem in Canada is that, despite having a reasonable array of parties, you're still stuck with the archaic First Past the Post voting system which sees the two major parties (the Liberals and the Conservatives), and especially Bloc Quebecois, win far more seats in parliament than is realistic given the amount of support they have. Once you get a decent system like MMP, giving the smaller parties (and the NDP) like the Greens more representative political clout things will seriously improve.

Jedidiah.