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Friday, May 12, 2006

Give up on voting
The Diebold machines are so insecure, that Slashdot reports they can be compromised in minutes, with minimal skill to wreak havok. link to article.

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.

"This one is worse than any of the others I've seen. It's more fundamental," said Douglas Jones, a University of Iowa computer scientist and veteran voting-system examiner for the state of Iowa.
...
Preparations could be made days or weeks beforehand, and the loading of the software could take only a minute or so once the machines are delivered to the polling places. In some cases, machines are delivered several days before an election to schools, churches, homes and other common polling places.

Scientists said Diebold appeared to have opened the hole by making it as easy as possible to upgrade the software inside its machines. The result, said Iowa's Jones, is a violation of federal voting system rules.

"All of us who have heard the technical details of this are really shocked. It defies reason that anyone who works with security would tolerate this design," he said.


I think I know how Republicans plan to stay in power. It certainly isn't through competent management. It sounds like Diebold has designed machines with open USB ports! Are they totally fucking retarded? Don't they know that USB plugs directly into the OS?

1 Comments:

minimalist said...

I don't know, considering the technical proficiency (not to mention overall competence) of the current adminstration, I'm not too worried about an assault from that front. Besides, if Diebold was 100% in bed with the GOP (which I haven't discounted yet), I'd think they'd be more likely to embed their fuckery in the programming itself, rather than risk some unknown third-party fuckery. Don't want any uppity Democrats catching wind and trying to steal the election back!

Anyway, considering how most savvy computer/technical people lean, I wouldn't be surprised to see the '08 elections go:

80% Libertarian candidate
10% Republican
8% Nathan Fillion
2% Democrat

11:29 AM, May 12, 2006

 

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