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California Testers Find Flaws In Voting Machines
Posted by
samzenpus
on Thu Dec 06, 2007 07:55 AM
from the your-vote-can-count-many-times dept.
from the your-vote-can-count-many-times dept.
quanticle writes "According to Ars Technica, California testers have discovered severe flaws in the ES&S voting machines. The paper seals were easily bypassed, and the lock could be picked with a "common office implement". After cracking the physical security of the device, the testers found it simple to reconfigure the BIOS to boot off external media. After booting a version of Linux, they found that critical system files were stored in plain text. They also found that the election management system that initializes the voting machines used unencrypted protocols to transmit the initialization data to the voting machines, allowing for a man-in-the-middle attack. Altogether, it is a troubling report for a company already in hot water for selling uncertified equipment to counties."
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Ohio Study Confirms Voting Systems Vulnerabilities 91 comments
bratgitarre writes "A comprehensive study of electronic voting systems (PDF) by vendors ES&S, Hart InterCivic and Premier (formerly Diebold) found that 'all of the studied systems possess critical security failures that render their technical controls insufficient to guarantee a trustworthy election'. In particular, they note all systems provide insufficiently protection against threats from election insiders, do not follow well-known security practices, and have 'deeply flawed software maintenance' practices." Some of these machines are the ones California testers found fault with last week.
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WhiteHat Voting (Score:5, Insightful)
1: Do like the rest of the world, and use a HB #2 pencil.
2: EFF and the rest of the American White hats get together and develop an Open Voting system, that are freely implementable by any state, that can withstand public scrutiny and peer review.
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JAM
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All data should be stored in plain text, and signed with multiple hashes, keys and/or ciphers.
# All communications protocols are authenticated, encrypted and signed.
Only to the extend tat no one can say that for instance booth #5 voted on candidate X.
You don't want to shroud the data in mystery or obscurity, merely make them tamper-proof (resistant).
# There are multiple, redundant backups of all data, including a hard copy paper trail that can be authenticated by a
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# All data is stored encrypted and signed.
All data should be stored in plain text, and signed with multiple hashes, keys and/or ciphers.
[/quote]
i think you nailed that one. most people forget that encryption is no good if you already have access to the key, and the software must have the key if it's supposed to make use of the data in the file. thus, a hacker has the key
remember people: signing good. crypting, not so good
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Great for citizens & taxpayers, not so good for the manufacturers. They might actually have to do real work to demonstrate the added value of machine x against machine y.
So, sorry, it's about as likely to happen as M$ open-sourcing Windows, (although in other news, I hear that they've offered to show the Chinese Gov. ALL of the windows source code in order to ally suspicions of backdoors - probably in fear of the
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But honestly, I don't see why the geeks are so upset here. This is our chance to rock the vote, and make sure that our votes actually count... more than once. If the current politicians aren't going to fix the voting machines, then lets flip a few bits, "elect" the EFF into office, and have this, plus copyright, patent, and net
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Hm, I could use an eraser to get around that. Do you realise that if paper was software, we could close down all the producers and distributers of erasers (or probably office equipment in gerneral!) in the states for selling devices for circumnavigating security?
~Pev
ATM Machines (Score:4, Interesting)
It will even print a receipt.
If it good enough for your money it is good enough for your vote
Re:ATM Machines (Score:5, Insightful)
Parent
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Only for the people who don't vote the way you want. It would only take a couple of elections and you could make them all go away anyway.
See? Nice and tidy
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If the ATM had a firmware upgrade that reported a hash of your bank account number with the vote, that would be sufficient to verify uniqueness and avoid double voting. And it wouldn't be traceable. The only problem I have is that the banks would be facilitating this. I'd have a hard time letting a company, who's main goal is to make money, get involved in the voting process.
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Now, that begs the question, Are the ATM's good enough for your money? They are after all made by the same companies that can't make voting machines.
I have never lost any money due to an ATM. Although banks have.
The problem is that the ATM/Voting Machine manufacturers look at their equipment as only needing protection from the outside. The unwashed masses that use the equipment to get cash or cast a vote can't be trusted at all. The insiders at the bank can be trusted, after all bankers wouldn't steal their own money (in most cases). That trusting of the insider mind set is being transfered to voting machines where the same thing can't be said about
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... manufacture daisy wheel printers.
"common office implement" (Score:4, Funny)
Jolyon
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It's the difference between, "can be hacked with a few lines of Perl," and listing the script out so that any script kiddie can do it.
There may be states with laws and certifications processes not as stringent as California still using these devices. Best not to tell everyone precisely how to break into them. I hope other states will insist that their machines be retooled, but that might d
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"Hi! Looks like you're trying to right the election! Need some help?"
Paper please! (Score:2, Insightful)
Let's do it like the ancient Greeks ... (Score:3, Insightful)
Alternatively, just use a whole brick.
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Rich
How much more does it take? (Score:5, Insightful)
How much more does it take to see that it is a BAD idea?
Yes, paper voting is costy. But we're not talking something where cost is the deciding factor. Democracy is about two things: People participating in the government of their country, and people trusting the government of their country. In a democracy, people have (ok, should have) a say in their country's behaviour. And this in turn should give them a feeling of belonging, they should feel their country takes them serious and as more than just peons who can be ordered around, because they chose their government themselves. This usually means more trust and faith in their rulers, because they themselves chose them (not some divine right to rule or military force, they installed their government).
Especially the latter part is at risk. If you cannot easily debunk any claims of voting fraud, because the means to vote offer themselves for easy manipulation, you open your country for claims of illegal manipulations that cannot be disproved. You destroy the faith people have in their country and the support. Not that it was really necessary these days, people already started losing faith in the democratic process and democracy altogether. But this has the potential to be the last straw.
Cost is not an argument when it comes to voting. If you want people to support the government as wanted by the majority, you have to make sure that it will be seen as the will of the majority. If fraud is easy, dissenting people will always claim foul play and you will not have any chance to call them bad losers. You can't prove them wrong, quite the opposite, we have seen now time and again that they have every reason to be suspicious.
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The problem is, a lot of people don't trust the human counters.
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See? Easy to shoot down any claims of voting fraud. You can count, you can read, you can verify the voting count.
Now please tell me how I, common man, aged past 30 and let's assume I'm not an IT expert, should verify some "count" done by a voting machine.
REALLY open the voting... (Score:4, Interesting)
Then independent organizations can tally the votes themselves and verify that the election was on the up and up. They can also allow people to check their votes in the database to verify individually that the database itself is correct. Assuming the database has been distributed in whole to all of the various organizations, mis-votes should be easy enough to discover.
Then it only remains that you need to protect people's anonymity. A ticket that can be used to verify an individual vote on behalf of a person can also be used to verify that vote to the satisfaction of a vote-buying machine (or worse.)
A solution is to obscure the information by giving each voter not one, but a list of ID numbers and told which one is theirs privately. That way, nefarious organizations wouldn't be able reliably say they've been given the correct number, which should kill their scheme. It's not a perfect solution, though, and I can already see flaws in it, but that just means it needs a bit more work before it's ready for prime time.
Parent
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This begs the question (Score:5, Funny)
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And then what? (Score:2)
Whats the point of e-voting (Score:5, Insightful)
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Re:Whats the point of e-voting (Score:5, Interesting)
That's currently the big if right now. It's just not transparent enough, and it's like all the companies building machines forgot completely about security; substituting a little theater instead. In addition, I don't like how a single machine or media failure can take out all of a machine's votes for the election. Two or three of those can throw elections today.
In addition, most of the advocates of paper voting have been talking about optical scan ballots. This opens up recounts to multiple solutions - Company X's scanner, Company Y's scanner, verified by hand if deemed necessary.
I am not one of those who believe that hand counting is automatically the most accurate - but optical scanning is old tech at this point, very accurate, and most importantly - auditable.
Secure and accurate Voting is always going to be complicated and tough - especially when you figure that you normally have at least two parties with people willing to cheat, who may be in the system.
Parent
Don't kid yourself... (Score:4, Interesting)
I, for one, like seeing my vote on hardcopy.
Parent
Re:Whats the point of e-voting (Score:5, Insightful)
With normal pen-and-paper voting, all skill you need is being able to count and discriminate between various candidates being chosing on the paper. You don't believe my count? You think I'm trying to fix elections? Here's the ballot, count for yourself.
With e-voting, you face a problem. You need very special skills to actually conduct a recount (if it is possible at all). Don't believe me that I'm not trying to fix elections in my favor? Sucks to be you if you don't happen to have the skills.
Parent
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Not to be pedantic, but the system in question does use paper (just not easily human readable). People mark machine readable paper ballots, and the PBC can be used to check the ballot before they turn it in to ensure that it is not over- or under-voted, etc. From the description of how they are using the PBCs, it sounds like they are trying to avoid some of the kinds of problems reported in Florida 2000, by letting a voter s
Sounds good! (Score:2)
The paper seals were easily bypassed, and the lock could be picked with a "common office implement". After cracking the physical security of the device, the testers found it simple to reconfigure the BIOS to boot off external media. After booting a version of Linux, they found that critical system files were stored in plain text. They also found that the election management system that initializes the voting machines used unencrypted protocols to transmit the initialization data to the voting machines, all
common office implement (Score:2, Funny)
Translation... (Score:2, Funny)
Paper Seals = DoS? (Score:5, Insightful)
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That's true, but anything accessible to the public could be potentially vandalized. At least the jurisdiction in question is using the PBCs to let the voters check their ballots, and not necessarily for counting the precinct results. If the machine were vandaliz
Criminal organizations (Score:4, Informative)
Why isn't this organization, which has clearly committed a criminal act, in jail?
What's next? (Score:2)
Ban all paper clips (Score:2)
Moving into the electronic age... (Score:3, Interesting)
I opt to kill a few trees to retain the paper method for now. I was forced to use an electronic voting machine (Diebold) in my district during the last local election in my state. I will not be using one regardless come the next election. Anyone can manipulate the machine behind the privacy fence surrounding the machine, without anyone knowing about it. Who is to say it cannot be tampered with even before the people are given access to the machine to cast their vote. I do not feel comfortable using an electronic voting device at this time.
I am almost 100% convinced that major elections do not matter anymore in this country in this day and age. The rich, and the corrupt have a strangle hold on our government and the media. Just look at the biased mass media coverage that is happening today. It is as if the media has already made the decisions for us about the elections, and those who own the media have very powerful ties to the government. There are no real debates between candidates, but they are still called debates. There are no tough questions, and there are no truthful straight forward consistent answers but from a couple of candidates, which are silenced and kept from the publics knowledge by powerful people whom are in control. I do have some hope, but it is fading fast.
I honestly feel that there will be another civil war in this country if things continue the way they are. It will not be the Whites against the Blacks, against the Hispanics, etc... It will be the poor against the rich. You know where the corporations and the corrupt politicians will stand when this happens. Change takes ballots or bullets. Sooner or later people will be tired of trying to make change peacefully with ballots.
It may not happen in my lifetime, but I think it will happen sooner than anyone thinks if the current path is followed. All it will take is someone high up in the military to finally get fed up with the corruption to take the action of cleaning house. We have already seen first hand the dissent in the military ranks all the way to the top. Several generals have peacefully resigned/retired and spoken in protest to the insane, illogical decisions made by the current administration and the path it has taken us down. Sooner or later someone with a bigger set of balls will do something about it if this continues.
It would not be a good thing to have this happen, but if things continue the way they are I would sadly be in support of it. It would be a rough road, but change is needed in a bad way. We are currently on a path of assured economic destruction, which will have effects far and wide around the world. We should learn from the past history of other, once large and powerful Republics. It seems to me that we are doomed to repeat history unless there is change.
I hold the hope though, that this vast information highway called the internet will tip the field in the favor of the people in due time. The option to see and read more news from many sources, rather than the few sources force fed to the masses controlled by the powerful and corrupt few. The internet has broadened my view of things. This too may not happen in my lifetime, but I hold hope that it will foster a peaceful change in time.
I hope for a peaceful change, but I am very afraid of what could and might happen.
If you bypass physical security, it's all over (Score:3)
You can stop reading the article here. Once physical security has been breached it's all over. With the machine open, you now have complete control over it, even to the point of changing out the hardware. This also applies to any machine that handles money, including ATM's.
All the software security measures in the world won't protect you if physical security is breached. So, if the physical security of a voting machine cannot be maintained at least as well as an ATM, or better yet a slot machine in a casino (constant surveillance), then using the voting machine in the first place is NOT secure.