New Tests Fuel Doubts about Vote Machines

[Avery L. Breath]

New Tests Fuel Doubts about Vote Machines
    By Marc Caputo and Gary Fineout
    The Miami Herald

    Thursday 15 December 2005

A top election official and computer experts say computer hackers could easily change election results, after they found numerous flaws with a state-approved voting-machine in Tallahassee.
    Tallahassee - A political operative with hacking skills could alter the results of any election on Diebold-made voting machines - and possibly other new voting systems in Florida - according to the state capital's election supervisor, who said Diebold software has failed repeated tests.

    Ion Sancho, Leon County's election chief, said tests by two computer experts, completed this week, showed that an insider could surreptitiously change vote results and the number of ballots cast on Diebold's optical-scan machines.

    After receiving county commission approval Tuesday, Sancho scrapped Diebold's system for one made by Elections Systems and Software, the same provider used by Miami-Dade and Broward counties. The difference between the systems: Sancho's machines use a fill-in-the-blank paper ballot that allows for after-the-fact manual recounts, while Broward and Miami-Dade use ATM-like touchscreens that leave no paper trail.

    "That's kind of scary. If there's no paper trail, you have to rely solely on electronic results. And now we know that they can be manipulated under the right conditions, without a person even leaving a fingerprint," said Sancho, who once headed the state's elections supervisors association.

    The Leon County test results are likely to further fuel suspicions that the new electronic voting systems in Florida, in place since the 2002 elections, are susceptible to manipulation.

    When the debate hit fever pitch before last year's presidential election, many conservatives said questions about the machinery were a liberal ploy to undermine confidence in the voting system.

    Elections chiefs in Broward and Miami-Dade said Wednesday they have good security and are not particularly concerned - though both have had "glitches" that have been tough to explain.

    Sancho agrees that good security is key, but said he's not sure he won't also have problems with the $1.3 million ES&S system, which he'll also test.

    Diebold Users

    Twenty-nine counties, including Monroe, use different versions of paper-ballot voting systems manufactured by Diebold, a leading manufacturer of security systems and voting machines. One county uses Diebold touchscreens.

    A spokesman for Diebold Election Systems Inc. could not be reached for comment Wednesday.

    Sancho said Diebold isn't the only one to blame for hacker-prone equipment. The Florida secretary of state's office should have caught these problems early on, he said, and the Legislature should scrap a law severely restricting recounts on touch-screen machines and equip them with the means of producing a paper trail.

    A spokeswoman for the secretary of state's office said any faults Sancho found were between him and Diebold.

    "If Ion Sancho has security concerns with his system, he needs to discuss them with Diebold," spokeswoman Jenny Nash said.

    Sancho first clashed with Diebold in May, when he teamed up with a nonprofit election-monitoring group called BlackBoxVoting.org, which has made a crusade of showing that electronic voting machines are subject to fraud. BlackBox hired Herbert Thompson, a computer-science professor and strategist at Security Innovation, which tests software for companies such as Google and Microsoft.

    Thompson couldn't hack into the system from the outside. So Sancho gave him access to the central machine that tabulates votes and to the last school election at Leon County High.

    Thompson told The Herald he was "shocked" at how easy it was to get in, make the loser the winner and leave without a trace. The machine asked for a user name and password, but didn't require it, he said. That meant it had not just a "front door, but a back door as big as a garage," Thompson said.

    From there, Thompson said, he typed five lines of computer code - and switched 5,000 votes from one candidate to another.

    "I am positive an eighth grader could do this," Thompson said.

    After BlackBox and Sancho announced the results, Diebold's senior lawyer, Michael Lindroos, wrote Sancho, Leon County and the state of Florida questioning the results and calling the test "a very foolish and irresponsible act" that may have violated licensing agreements.

    Over the past few months, computer expert Harri Hursti tried to manipulate election results with the memory card inserted into each Diebold voting machine. The card records votes during an election, then at the end of the day is taken to a central location where results are totaled.

    Hursti figured out how to hack into the memory card by using an agricultural scanning device easily available on the Internet, said BlackBox founder Bev Harris. He learned how to hide votes, make losers out of winners and leave no trace, she said.

    Hursti couldn't be reached for comment.

    With some variation, both Miami-Dade and Broward use these cartridge-like cards to record votes and report election results. Experts like Thompson say they believe the counties could be subject to electronic ballot-rigging - which would be hard to detect and correct without a paper trail.

    Final Test

    Sancho said he tried to discuss the problems with Diebold, but met with resistance. On Monday, he did one final test with Hursti at the Leon County supervisor's office, Hursti hacked the memory card to spit out seven "yes" votes on an issue and one "no" vote.

    Then, six "no" votes and two "yes" votes were cast into the machine the same way voters would. Those results didn't show up in the final tally - just the ones hacked into the card.

    Officials for ES&S, which makes the systems used in Miami-Dade and Broward counties, couldn't be reached for comment Wednesday.

    Seth Kaplan, a spokesman for the Miami-Dade elections office, said officials continually monitor the quality and security of their machines.

    "The problem of election fraud predates current technology by hundreds of years. We have people we trust and in our case we have checks to reconcile the results," Kaplan said.

    But Broward's election supervisor, Brenda Snipes, said she's at least intrigued. She, too, vouches for her office's security, but says there's a need to remain vigilant.

    "Is hacking possible? We think we have a secure system. With technology, those people who have that level of expertise, I guess that could be possible," Snipes said. "We need to see what Ion did. He tries a lot of things. He's always analyzing things."

    But Sancho said the time for passive monitoring is over. The Diebold problems show that simple tests haven't been done on at least one major voting system, he said.

    "These were sold as safe systems. They passed tests as safe systems," Sancho said. "But even in the so-called safe system, if you don't follow the paper ballots, there is a way to rig the election. Except it's not a bunch of guys stuffing ballots in a precinct. It's possibly one person acting in secret changing thousands of votes in a second."

  -------

[dergheist]

How typical, idiots with money playing with technology that they do not understand.  Oh well, at least all those hackers showed how easy it is to change votes.  I say just keep it all live feed and tally them using secure lines all connected to a central command and send by wireless to the tally center.  Much faster tally and if made hacker resistant, could prove to be a worthwhile venture in my opinion.

[Avery L. Breath]

Worst Ever Security Flaw Found in Diebold TS Voting Machine
    By Alan Dechert Refere
    BellaCiao.org

    Monday 31 July 2006

    Sacramento, California - "This may be the worst security flaw we have seen in touch screen voting machines," says Open Voting Foundation president, Alan Dechert. Upon examining the inner workings of one of the most popular paperless touch screen voting machines used in public elections in the United States, it has been determined that with the flip of a single switch inside, the machine can behave in a completely different manner compared to the tested and certified version.

    "Diebold has made the testing and certification process practically irrelevant," according to Dechert. "If you have access to these machines and you want to rig an election, anything is possible with the Diebold TS - and it could be done without leaving a trace. All you need is a screwdriver." This model does not produce a voter verified paper trail so there is no way to check if the voter's choices are accurately reflected in the tabulation.

    Open Voting Foundation is releasing 22 high-resolution close up pictures of the system. This picture, in particular, shows a "BOOT AREA CONFIGURATION" chart painted on the system board.

    The most serious issue is the ability to choose between "EPROM" and "FLASH" boot configurations. Both of these memory sources are present. All of the switches in question (JP2, JP3, JP8, SW2 and SW4) are physically present on the board. It is clear that this system can ship with live boot profiles in two locations, and switching back and forth could change literally everything regarding how the machine works and counts votes. This could be done before or after the so-called "Logic And Accuracy Tests".

    A third possible profile could be field-added in minutes and selected in the "external flash" memory location, the interface for which is present on the motherboard.

    This is not a minor variation from the previously documented attack point on the newer Diebold TSx. To its credit, the TSx can only contain one boot profile at a time. Diebold has ensured that it is extremely difficult to confirm what code is in a TSx (or TS) at any one time but it is at least theoretically possible to do so. But in the TS, a completely legal and certified set of files can be instantly overridden and illegal uncertified code be made dominant in the system, and then this situation can be reversed leaving the legal code dominant again in a matter of minutes.

    "These findings underscore the need for open testing and certification. There is no way such a security vulnerability should be allowed. These systems should be recalled."

[senorsalvia]

:x -------  Living here in Florida, this is something I should prolly take as just another phase in the loss of "us", the peeps freely choosing who we elect, but damnit, this is really making me wonder if there is any reason to vote again.....    Demonstrating---  Revolting----   Demanding a redress of greivances, yeah, I can see that; but continuing to vote???      :cry:    sal

[Avery L. Breath]

"Hotel Minibar" Keys Open Diebold Voting Machines
    By Ed Felten
    Freedom to Tinker

    Monday 18 September 2006

    Like other computer scientists who have studied Diebold voting machines, we were surprised at the apparent carelessness of Diebold's security design. It can be hard to convey this to nonexperts, because the examples are technical. To security practitioners, the use of a fixed, unchangeable encryption key and the blind acceptance of every software update offered on removable storage are rookie mistakes; but nonexperts have trouble appreciating this. Here is an example that anybody, expert or not, can appreciate:

    The access panel door on a Diebold AccuVote-TS voting machine - the door that protects the memory card that stores the votes, and is the main barrier to the injection of a virus - can be opened with a standard key that is widely available on the Internet.

    On Wednesday we did a live demo for our Princeton Computer Science colleagues of the vote-stealing software described in our paper and video. Afterward, Chris Tengi, a technical staff member, asked to look at the key that came with the voting machine. He noticed an alphanumeric code printed on the key, and remarked that he had a key at home with the same code on it. The next day he brought in his key and sure enough it opened the voting machine.

    This seemed like a freakish coincidence - until we learned how common these keys are.

    Chris's key was left over from a previous job, maybe fifteen years ago. He said the key had opened either a file cabinet or the access panel on an old VAX computer. A little research revealed that the exact same key is used widely in office furniture, electronic equipment, jukeboxes, and hotel minibars. It's a standard part, and like most standard parts it's easily purchased on the Internet. We bought several keys from an office furniture key shop - they open the voting machine too. We ordered another key on eBay from a jukebox supply shop. The keys can be purchased from many online merchants.

    Using such a standard key doesn't provide much security, but it does allow Diebold to assert that their design uses a lock and key. Experts will recognize the same problem in Diebold's use of encryption - they can say they use encryption, but they use it in a way that neutralizes its security benefits.

    The bad guys don't care whether you use encryption; they care whether they can read and modify your data. They don't care whether your door has a lock on it; they care whether they can get it open. The checkbox approach to security works in press releases, but it doesn't work in the field.