Chimp Can Hack Diebold Electronic Voting System

rbuysse writes "A million monkeys can write Shakespeare, but it only takes one to mess up an election. Scoop here." Blackboxvoting is behind this demonstration; there's also a lengthy thread on the Bugtraq mailing list.

Nuff Said

The Diebold central tabulators use a program called "GEMS" that saves vote totals in Microsoft Access ...

I think that's all we really need to say about Diebold.

Your first clue

"saves vote totals in Microsoft Access"
Hey, at least its accurate advertising

Monkeys

"State elections officials also said Wednesday that they are confident they can protect the system from a decidedly lower-tech threat.

Elections administrator Linda Lamone said" that monkeys will be prevented from accessing the machines during the elections..... :P

So, uh

Is that chimp one of the Diebold engineers?

Re:So, uh

Don't insult the monkeys!

Re:So, uh

You fools laugh, but this could be serious. Maybe it's some kind of super monkey. What if there's more supermonkeys like it? WHAT IF THEY'RE CREATING AN ARMY OF THEM? Holy shit. It must be a conspiracy like in the X-Files... ROSWELL style. This little monkey could be the fuckin' damn dirty ape responsible for the fall of the human race. In this world gone mad, we won't spank the monkey- the monkey will spank us. And after the fall of man, these monkey fucks'll start wearing our clothes and rebuilding the world in their image. OH and only those as super smart as me will be left alive to bitterly cry - DAMN YOUS DIEBOLD. Goddamn yous all to hell.

In other news

A new denial of service attack is spreading through the wild. It involves hurling feces...

Video Mirror

Incase of the enevitable slashdotting, here's the movie of the chimp hacking the vote [chrispyman.com].

No kiddin'

A million monkeys can write Shakespeare, but it only takes one to mess up an election.

I'm a proud Bush voter, You insensitive clod!

Attention Script Kiddies....

Final_Results.Mdb
Look for this attatchment on the Electoral College's Outlook Express inbox.

It's all a liberal conspiracy

That's why the liberal media, like Fox, is reporting on it.

I love this quote...

"Dacek said Wednesday that she fears that critics of the new voting system may try to physically sabotage the machines."

Wow. That's so..... scaremongering.....

What I don't understand is why...

rather than going 'all electronic' there are not more efforts to have a hybrid paper-computer model, off the top of my head:

- the voter comes to the poll, is identified and is given a paper token with a barcode that contains the polling ID station ID and a sequential number (note that the ID is not humanly readable, important for privacy)

- the voter goes in the box, which has a touch screen and an 'easy' UI, voter inserts the paper token in the box which scans it

- voter votes on the touch screen (make it really easy, BIG buttons, BIG text, whatever)

- machine prints out a ballot with the voter's vote in humanly readable form (say, prints out a 'real' ballot with blackened out rectangles on the relevant candidate(s)) and a 2D barcode at the bottom with the vote in machine readable form including the ID on the 'paper token'

- voter looks at the ballot to make sure it's ok, folds it, comes out, puts the ballot in one box and the paper token in the other. If the ballot is not ok there is a shredder right there inside the poll station and the voter votes again.

========= election over ===========

the paper token are shipped to the central office, scanned (should be very fast via the 2d barcodes) and votes tabulated accordingly; for an additional level of security you can always count the votes via the 'human readable' part of the ballot before shipping them.

If a recount or anything is necessary there are several safeguards with this system:

- you can't have ballot box stuffing, because 1 'token' = 1 vote and if those ID are generated 'well' you could even double check that all IDs make sense, sort of like a 'there are only so many valid serial numbers' there. Multiple votes with the same 'ID' will be discarded.

- you can't have doubts on the voter intent, they'll vote on the screen *AND* look at the paper copy before putting it in the ballot box later on

- if there is really no trust in the computers no problem, you can just look at the 'human readable' portion of the ballot as many times as you want: no nonsense about hanging chads or anything.

this (or something like it) would cover all the bases in terms of fast results (via scanning ballots, ship them all to a central location and do it), paper trail and so on. I really can't understand who in their right mind would consider putting the fate of the election in the hands of MS Access, for crying out loud!

Spin Spin Spin

From the article:

"Quite honestly it's somewhat insulting to elections officials and volunteers," he said to the idea that elections officers would tamper with vote results.

-Some Diebold talking head.

Sure we trust the election officials, but do we trust every contractor or tech who might work on those systems? Especially as Diebold seems so lax in checking backgrounds that people with convictions for fraud, blackmail, and embezzlement have access to their code. I'd bet that their contractors are even less subject to appropriate background checks.

Chimps can write News Articles, too...

Their "evidence" of a chimp hacking diebold is a series of poorly cut images of a chimp and a computer????? Come the fuck on now... First, half of the minute video is useless filler text and a picture of smiling chimp, which immedietly jumps to a sequence that could have only been cut by an editor with suffering from ADD syndrome. Seriously, where's that foot icon, because there's no way you could possibly take this story seriously.

But for the inveitable slashdotting it'll receive, I'll summerize: Makers say Diebold works, opponents say it doesn't, que poorly edited movie of monkey sitting by computer hitting stuff, analogous to the new "Baby hitting mouse" AOL 9.0 commercial. The End.

Thank me, beecause I just saved you 5-10 minutes of your life. Use it to get a free ipod or something.

Thankfully...

The good thing is that even though a monkey can hack the system this still puts the hack out of the reach of the average Republican ;)

Really, no disrespect...but

But Black Box Voting on Wednesday demonstrated two quick ways that "an unscrupulous person with no computer skills whatsoever" could sabotage vote totals, according to Associate Director Andy Stephenson.

Judging by the fact that most people with the time to volunteer for poll work are our 'seasoned citizens' who, let's be honest, aren't, as a group, too computer savvy, I'd be more worried about the scrupulous people with no computer skills whatsoever messing things up.

I know this makes me an ageist asshat, but how in the heck are all these people going to get up to speed on computers enough to ensure a little 'whoops' doesn't toss a whole county or something?

Insulting to officials?

"Quite honestly it's somewhat insulting to elections officials and volunteers," he said to the idea that elections officers would tamper with vote results.

I say "Quite honestly, it's somewhat insulting to the voters," to the idea that the voting public should naively disregard the human factor and that temptation/corruption/bribery "just don't happen."

Never underestimate the power of money, especially in large, unmarked bundles.

Wrong headline

But I guess Chimp hacks Access Database isn't really news.

Re:This story could make a liberal's head explode

They want to hate Republicans for possible taking advantage of flaws in evoting,

Who? Where? Please provide examples of a credible (ie. non-conspiracy theorist) source suggesting that Republicans might abuse a security hole.

and they also want to hate Fox News....

I'll give you the Fox News thing, but since your previous argument is now void, the novelty has worn off of this argument too. Anyway, "Hate corporate run news media" would have been a much more accurate term.

WHAT DOES IT MEAN!?

It means that your trolling was unsuccessful today. Please move along.

Re:This story could make a liberal's head explode

Who? Where? Please provide examples of a credible (ie. non-conspiracy theorist) source suggesting that Republicans might abuse a security hole.

Try the US Civil Rights Commission. (Their report on the Florida electoral fraud is available here: http://www.usccr.gov/pubs/vote2000/report/main.htm [usccr.gov])

Re:This story could make a liberal's head explode

Who? Where? Please provide examples of a credible (ie. non-conspiracy theorist) source suggesting that Republicans might abuse a security hole.

"I am committed to helping Ohio deliver its electoral votes to the President next year."
- Wally O'Dell, CEO Diebold

• Black Box Voting [blackboxvoting.com]
• CommonDreams [commondreams.org]
• Subliminal News [subliminalnews.com]

Re:This story could make a liberal's head explode

Although very questionable, and highly inflamitory, the above quote would provide better evidence of a corporate conspiracy (much more likely) than a conspiracy by the Republican party.

Re:This story could make a liberal's head explode

Read This [commondreams.org]

COLUMBUS - The head of a company vying to sell voting machines in Ohio told Republicans in a recent fund-raising letter that he is "committed to helping Ohio deliver its electoral votes to the president next year."

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.

It seems to me that someone who makes voting software shouldn't be promising to deliver votes, but maybe it's just me.

-Dan

Re:Fair and balanced??

I agree that there is an apparent bias in the politics of the stories submitted by CmdrTaco, though I feel any individual contributor to Slashdot is certainly entitled to have a bias. That's the great thing about the availability of feedback; we can all express our opinions.

However, most of the rejected stories you listed have nothing to do with technology; they merely describe political news or events. I think the bias Slashdot has toward "news for nerds" is appropriate; we can get our pure political news from other sources.

When I'm reading slashdot, I'm looking for info about tech trends and social impacts therefrom, nothing more.