!!! BREAKING - DIEBOLD SOURCE CODE !!!

Dr. Avi Rubin is currently Professor of Computer Science at John Hopkins University. He "accidently"got his hands on a copy of the Diebold software program--Diebold's source code--which runs their e-voting machines.
  Dr. Rubin's students pored over 48,609 lines of code that make up this software. One line in partictular stood out over all the rest:

                         #defineDESKEY((des_KEY8F2654hd4"

Go to http://www.senderberl.com/111004.htm

Scroll down to E-MAIL RECEIVED EARLY AM NOVEMBER 10, 2004

Dr. Avi Rubin is currently Professor of Computer Science at John Hopkins University. He "accidently"got his hands on a copy of the Diebold software program--Diebold's source code--which runs their e-voting machines.
  Dr. Rubin's students pored over 48,609 lines of code that make up this software. One line in partictular stood out over all the rest:

                         #defineDESKEY((des_KEY8F2654hd4"

     All commercial programs have provisions to be encrypted so as to protect them from having their contents read or changed by anyone not having the key..The line that staggered the Hopkin's team was that the method used to encrypt the Diebold machines was a method called Digital Encryption Standard (DES), a code that was broken in 1997 and is NO LONGER USED by anyone to secure prograns.F2654hd4 was the key to the encryption. Moreover, because the KEY was IN the source code, all Diebold machines would respond to the same key. Unlock one, you have then ALL unlocked.

  I can't believe there is a person alive who wouldn't understand the reason this was allowed to happen. This wasen't a mistake by any stretch of the imagination. This was a fixed election, plain and simple.

     This second coup d'etat is either stopped now or America ceases to be.

See more links at http://www.senderberl.com/111004.htm

•  I do believe in fairies.

  clap clap clap.

  by Cheez Whiz on Wed Nov 10, 2004 at 08:04:39 AM PDT

  •  careful

    It is bad to be under the illusion that fraud was the only possible explanation for Bush winning.

    But it is good for more people to become aware of these problems and for word to be spreading.

    Not a good idea to stand in the way of the second.  Diebold machines are highly insecure and are in place statewide in Georgia.  Attention does deserve to be focused on this for future elections.
    

    by tunesmith on Wed Nov 10, 2004 at 12:33:18 PM PDT

    •  Not a good idea to stand...

      in the way of the second? Not sure what you mean by that. If the machines are audited, as Beverly Harris wants to do with her Freedom of Information request, and the audit shows the machines were tampered with, shouldn't we actively question the outcome of this election?  

      by scorpiorising on Wed Nov 10, 2004 at 01:28:42 PM PDT

      •  Wow

        I must be a horrible writer.  I meant exactly the opposite of what you think I meant.  We should not stand in the way of the news spreading of our horrible voting system.
        

        by tunesmith on Wed Nov 10, 2004 at 01:37:15 PM PDT

        •  Dramatic demonstration

          If it is so easy, why doesn't a progressive hacker-maven go in tonight and put a few million more votes in Kerry's column?

          At the very least this would demolish the credibility of any of the returns in Ohio...

          by Minerva on Wed Nov 10, 2004 at 03:54:33 PM PDT

          •  Interesting concept...

            ...and a novel idea for a peaceful form of protest.

            by scorpiorising on Wed Nov 10, 2004 at 06:26:23 PM PDT

  •  Some information about CRYPTOGRAPHY

    Here is some stuff I posted on another website in a discussion about this very diary:

    This is nothing like the kind of mistake that NASA made. Sorry, but there's no parallel.

     I know a few things about cryptography, it was a big interest of mine.

     DES is a standard that was created in 1975 but it was kept artificially weak by the NSA. The authors wanted it to be 128 bits or more, but they kept it at 64 bits (54 actual key bits, the rest is parity, I think). It was safe at the time and stayed relatively safe for a few decades. Banks & government agencies used it for classified (but not top secret) stuff. The only entities with enough crunching power to break it were probably the NSA, the KGB, etc..

     It is trivial to break it with modern hardware and nobody uses anything less than tripleDES anymore. DES is a very obsolete standard. Even with a good implementation, it would be pretty trivial to brute-force the key of a DES system if you put a little ressources into it (off the shelf hardware), although it could've posed a problem of dealing with the sheer number if all voting machines had had a different encryption keys. But it was not the case.

     Now that's for the cipher choice.

     The implementation is also disastrous. You need a strong key, otherwise any encryption (even the latest AES standards -- anything else than a one time pad isn't secure) is useless. In the present case, the key is HARD-CODED into the source code and is the same for all machines.

     Unlike the university teacher who wrote what I was quoting, I won't go as far as to say that the election was stolen. This is only strong evidence if it's true. But I agree with him that if that code that was reviewed is the actual voting machine code used by Diebold, it can't be a mistake, any newbie like me can tell you just how wrong and weak that type of implementation of security is and people paid to design security for a living sure know better than me. There is also the fact that Diebold always refused to release their code for reviewing by third parties that asked for it.

     Also, not many people had access to these machines, but Diebold did through their employees and through anybody favourable to their cause within the electoral process.

     So now it's pretty obvious that there was the possibility to temper with the machines. The proof that it did happen is not there, but it's pretty hard to imagine why else that GAPING SECURITY HOLE would've been left there by a company that promised many time to "deliver the election for Bush" and contributed large sums of money to the republican party.

     Yeah, yeah, tinfoil hat. It's all crazy. Zealot.

     But what would it take for people to entertain the idea that it's very probable that it happened IF it was the actual voting machine source code that was examined. There is no paper trail, so we'll probably never know.

    To demonstrate just how obsolete and unsafe DES is, the EFF did a nice demonstration a little while ago (5 years ago, actually -- computer hardware is MUCH faster and cheaper now). They could crack it within a day (22 hours, actually) with little money investment.

     http://www.eff.org/Privacy/Crypto/Crypto_misc/DESCracker/

     And you can download the source code of the DES-cracker here.

     http://www.cosic.esat.kuleuven.ac.be/des/

    by MikeCapone on Wed Nov 10, 2004 at 03:17:15 PM PDT

•  Old

  news

  by Jonathan Ferguson on Wed Nov 10, 2004 at 08:08:53 AM PDT

  •  Actually, thats interesting...

    The fact that Johns Hopkins student could pour over the code and find this tells me that the genie (Diebold's priority code) is out of the bottle, whether you believe the sytem was hacked or not.

    BTW, its the the optical scanning machines that are hooked up to MS Windows Machines, stupid. Anyone with PC Anywhere could change the outcome.

    by hughdidit on Wed Nov 10, 2004 at 10:01:35 AM PDT

    •  right

      The point you make is a good one - it isn't an oversight that the machines are open to fraud.  After all, what exactly are the requirements the engineers originally received?  Does anyone realistically believe that Diebold and ESS "forgot" that open verifiability was important in an election?  Of course not.

      Does anyone believe that black box voting machines are superior to paper ballots, ink and scanners?  The simpler solution is cheaper, faster to use (no lines), almost as fast to count and leaves a paper trail - so why, exactly, where these black box machines built and sold in the first place?  Yeah, profit motive, I know.... but they could have made the same profit with a better machine, and instead chose to do their part to reduce the legitimacy of US elections.

      Everyone following this story knew fraud was possible in the election, so those who wanted to commit fraud knew, too.  Maybe our side cheated as much as the other guys, but since tyrants revel in tactics that are an anethema to small 'd' democrats, I doubt it.

      Was there fraud?  Have men killed their children or parents for power?  Rigging an election is child's play.  As long as the US election process is unverifiable, voting is useless.  I won't be their monkey, casting a FisherPrice vote so they can say they rule by consent of the governed.

       

      by sfgary on Wed Nov 10, 2004 at 10:34:46 AM PDT

•  I is a computer dumbass

  but I seem to recall that this was out there about a year ago?

  Me no get computer stuff, though.  So I'm not sure.

  by Plutonium Page on Wed Nov 10, 2004 at 08:09:21 AM PDT

•  True, but not breaking news

  lawnorder posted this on Saturday, and the original article is from late October.  It is still very important info:

  Here's what lawnorder wrote:  

   Cover Story on diebold woes DELETED from Jewish Times!
  by lawnorder
  [Subscribe]

  Sat Nov 6th, 2004 at 01:21:50 PST

  The story below, which I reference in several posts GOT DELETED from Jewish Times. And it was their cover story!!!
  Luckily Google kept a cached version and I promptly save it. Save it too, if you can.
  http://www.texasturkey.us/backup/ballot.html

  Like writing your pin on your bank card

  Ballot Boxing
  Joel N. Shurkin
  OCTOBER 29, 2004

  Last month, U.S. Sen. Barbara A. Mikulski decided to try one of Maryland's new voting machines in Takoma Park. It was a brand-new Diebold AccuVote-TS. The state of Maryland has just spent $55 million for the ATM-like electronic voting devices to be used in the upcoming presidential election.

  The AccuVote, acting just as a demonstration, offered two choices: "yes" and "no." Sen. Mikulski pressed "no." The machine registered "yes."

  The cackling sound you heard was Avi Rubin, technical director of the Information Security Institute at Johns Hopkins. But, as Dr. Rubin will openly confess, it really wasn't funny.

  Diaries :: lawnorder's diary ::
  If there are still people who have access to Kerry / DNC, please pass this to them, to help build a case:

  Ballot Boxing
  Joel N. Shurkin
  OCTOBER 29, 2004

  Last month, U.S. Sen. Barbara A. Mikulski decided to try one of Maryland's new voting machines in Takoma Park. It was a brand-new Diebold AccuVote-TS. The state of Maryland has just spent $55 million for the ATM-like electronic voting devices to be used in the upcoming presidential election.

  The AccuVote, acting just as a demonstration, offered two choices: "yes" and "no." Sen. Mikulski pressed "no." The machine registered "yes."

  The cackling sound you heard was Avi Rubin, technical director of the Information Security Institute at Johns Hopkins. But, as Dr. Rubin will openly confess, it really wasn't funny.

  One-third of voters in the November election will be using electronic voting machines, simple-minded computers that record and report votes. Dr. Rubin and many computer scientists see nothing less than a threat to American democracy in these machines. They are easy to tamper with, he believes, and that makes it possible to rig elections. Indeed, there already are conspiracy theories flying around the Internet of a conservative plot to steal the presidential election. (A number of Conservative groups are equally unhappy about the instruments.) In many cases they are set up to prevent recounts in case of disputes.

  Plots to the contrary, after what happened in Florida in 2000 -- and what is happening in Florida now -- attention must be paid.

  It was Dr. Rubin who first raised serious security issues with the electronic voting machines and who has taken the brunt of attacks from the voting machine industry. He instantly rose from an obscure Jewish computer scientist to a media star, and he's having a wonderful time.

  "After my study broke, the public relations office had television crews lined up outside my office and for a five-week stretch, I was on national television every week," he said.

  He is still quoted regularly in the national media on the debate over the machines as the election nears, and this spring he reached the apogee of contemporary culture, a brief appearance as a "Zen moment" on the "Daily Show with Jon Stewart" on cable. He was scheduled for "60 Minutes" this week.

  Someone recognized him at the swimming pool at the Owings Mills Jewish Community Center as the guy on television, and even his plumber announced himself impressed.

  How much effect his efforts have had in curbing the use of the electronic devices or in modifying how they are used is not clear. Several states, confronted with challenges to the integrity of their elections, have backed away from using them, several have changed the voting method to make them more secure and others -- most particularly Maryland -- became defensive and refused to budge.

  "His study had an enormous effect," said Barbara Simons, former president of the Association of Computing Machines (ACM), the computer scientists' professional organization. "Of course it didn't prevent Maryland from buying the stupid machines."

  "What we're fighting about is democracy. If we lose confidence that our votes will be accurately counted, that's it," she said.

  The voting machines are technically known as Direct Recording Electronic voting machines or DREs.

  Dr. Rubin's adventure began last year almost by accident. Bev Harris, a writer in Renton, Wash., was researching a book on electronic voting in January 2003. While "googling" for background, she stumbled on a Web site that turned out to be an electronic archive of a company bought by Diebold Inc. The site was huge, containing hundreds of unprotected company files that could be downloaded by anyone who wanted them. One file hinted that Diebold had put code that was uncertified for elections in DREs headed for a Georgia election, which is illegal, so she downloaded it to see. The download took 40 hours and filled seven CDs.

  She posted what she found on a Web site in New Zealand (geographic distance means nothing to these people) and someone told her that one file looked suspiciously like Diebold's source code, the programming that lies at the heart of the DREs.

  Posting unprotected source codes for a commercial product on the Web is rare and considered unspeakably stupid in the computer world, so, word spread quickly, and a computer scientist at Stanford University told Dr. Rubin. Dr. Rubin, in turn called in Adam Stubblefield, a doctoral student at Hopkins, and Tadayoshi Kohno, a summer graduate student, telling them they needed to drop everything and come see what was on his computer. What they were looking at, they concluded, was a program compiled in 2000 and its April 2002 update, apparently posted so programmers could work on it. It was nothing less than the programming that made the voting machines voting machines.

  The students pored over 49,609 lines of "code," computer language commands that look like hieroglyphics to anyone not trained as a programmer. One line blew them away. It means nothing to laymen, but it was enough to make Dr. Rubin's hair stand on end.

  #define DESKEY ((des_key* "F2654hd4".

  All commercial programs have provisions to be encrypted, protected by secret code so that no one could read or change the contents without the encryption key. That is particularly true of programs that require transmission by telephone or wireless networks. The line that staggered the Hopkins team told them first, that the method used to encrypt the Diebold machines was a method called Digital Encryption Standard (DES), a code that was broken in 1997 and is no longer used by anyone to secure programs. F2654hd4 was the key to the encryption.

  The programmers had done the equivalent of putting the family jewels in a safe, putting up a blinking neon sign reading "Jewels in Here!" and taping the lock's combination to the safe door. Moreover, because the key was in the source code, all Diebold machines responded to the same key. Unlock one, you can unlock them all.

  That was only one of the problems Dr. Rubin's team found. The computer language used to write the program, C++, is never recommended for secure programs because hackers can -- and do -- attack it easily. There are other programming languages far more secure that the Diebold programmers ignored, perhaps because they didn't know them well.

  Additionally, all large computer programs, which can sometimes run into the hundreds of thousands of lines, are written by teams and therefore are extensively annotated. One programmer or a team puts in an instruction and then adds a note explaining why it was done that way. Other programmers can add comments or base what they do on the reasoning in the comments. Or, they can use the annotations to hunt for bugs when the program misbehaves.

  Dr. Rubin said that when he worked for IBM one summer, there were three pages of notes for every line of code, and no line was added until committees of reviewers approved. Whole pages of the Diebold source code were without annotations or signs of review, something you don't see on professionally written programs, he said. Some of the annotations that existed even warned that the code contained unfixed bugs. Clearly, Dr. Rubin thought, Diebold was not using the top of the class at M.I.T. to write programs for its voting machines.

  The code is so badly written, Dr. Rubin shows sections to audiences at computer science conferences to get laughs.

  Moreover, the Diebold program was written for computers using Windows, Microsoft's relatively unstable and notoriously insecure operating system, the target of choice for hackers everywhere. (Almost all the staff of Hopkins' security institute uses Apple Macintoshes, which are virus-free and far more difficult to tinker with.)

  Oh, there is more. The method chosen by Diebold for voting required the voting officials to check the registration of each voter and then hand them a "smartcard," a credit card-like piece of plastic containing digital information that essentially turns the machine on. The machine reads the card and if the information is correct, permits the voter to cast his or her ballot.

  The smartcards chosen for the Diebold DREs were not encrypted and could be forged by a 15-year-old in his bedroom at an equipment cost of about three weeks' allowance, Dr. Rubin said. Anyone with a phony card could vote more than once.

  Dr. Rubin, the Hopkins students and a colleague from Rice University posted their findings on the Internet (later in an engineering journal) and then Dr. Rubin, who is not shy, called John Schwartz of The New York Times, at which point, all hell broke loose.

  The reaction of the voting machine industry -- especially Diebold, one of four voting machine manufacturers -- was furious. The first comment, besides attacking Dr. Rubin and company, was to deny there were problems. When other studies showed the same things, the defense switched to admitting there were problems but they had been fixed. Diebold says the programming in the machines it sells now -- including those to be used in Maryland -- is not the same programming the Hopkins study looked at. Since the programming also is proprietary and Diebold won't show any new versions to anyone, the claims must go unverified, which is a whole other problem.

  Dr. Rubin does not believe the machines are fixable. Diebold says the smartcards now are encrypted.

  "The problems were at different levels. Some are fixable, like they used broken encryption, but you can fix that -- put in good encryption. But there was a very bad software engineering process that went into the machines. It was clear looking at the code. If you have a software package that is as bad, the answer is not to try to plug the holes and fix it because every time you do that, you introduce new bugs. I don't think you should try to evolve 45,000 lines of broken code into a system that's secure. You need to start over with a more talented and experienced team.

  "I joked with my wife about wearing a bulletproof vest," Dr. Rubin said. "We lost them a lot of business and put their industry in turmoil."

  Nonetheless, whatever is in those machines is what you will use in the November election and so will voters in 38 states.

  He was not planning on such a public life.

  He was born in Kansas where his parents, both academics, were graduate students. In something of a reversal of roles, his father became an English professor (specialty: English Jews in English literature) and his mother is a mechanical engineer, the type of person who writes computer programs in FORTRAN to create recipes for dinner.

  In 1970, they made aliyah..

  The Rubins taught in Israeli universities for six years, Then Israel was inundated with refugees from the Soviet Union and the universities thought they were in more need than former Americans, so the Rubins lost tenure. They moved back to the United States in 1976. The family moved to Alabama where Dr. Rubin was in the first graduating class at the Birmingham Jewish day school. Dr. Rubin and his three siblings and parents (who now teach at Vanderbilt) often speak Hebrew when they are together.

  He got his Ph.D. in computer science from the University of Michigan.

  "When I got my Ph.D., my adviser said, you have a Ph.D., you're a computer scientist. Don't be too narrow. Now I've managed to become synonymous not only with computer security but a tiny little subfield of it," he said.

  What he also got involved with was a battle between bureaucrats, including those who staked their careers on buying DREs, and academics. Both sides accuse the other of not knowing what they are talking about. Most of his colleagues in computer science, he said, support his position. Dr. Simons, now a co-chair of ACM's public policy committee, agreed.

  Other computer security specialists, including the National Security Agency, testified in support of the Hopkins study.

  Legislators, concerned with what the Hopkins study showed, asked the Department of Legislative Services to review the state's purchase of the Diebold machines and held hearings. First, they hired a firm called SAIC to study the situation, and then hired RABA Technologies, a Maryland consulting company to review both studies. SAIC said Dr. Rubin was correct in his assessment but didn't completely understand the Maryland voting system. RABA supported the Hopkins study in most of its accusations and found even more problems.

  RABA's Michael A. Wertheimer and a team of company hackers broke into the Board of Elections computer, changed the results of a mock election and then backed out without leaving a trace.

  "We did it in under five minutes," he told "The Daily Show."

  Then there is what happens when the results are uploaded from the DREs to the state's computer.

  "You're more secure buying a book from Amazon," he concluded.

  He also found that the Maryland election officials had not upgraded Windows with security patches from Microsoft and were, in fact, 15 upgrades behind. Every time they tried to load a patch, Windows crashed.

  Mr. Wertheimer finally suggested the machines be wrapped in tamper-resistant tape around the machines, something Linda Lamone, the state's election administrator, says can't be done in time and would look awful.

  More important to Dr. Rubin, "RABA found the Hopkins report to be a thorough, independent review of the AccuVote source code and should be credited with raising valid issues that have resulted in considerable improvements," concluded RABA.

  But the state hasn't done enough improvements to suit Dr. Rubin and his allies.

  There are 150 million registered voters in America and a third will be using voting machines despite the fact the machines have never been tested in a mass scale. Anecdotally, there are reasons for concern.

  New Mexico, a leader in electronic voting, went to Al Gore in 2000 by 366 votes. In one county, 678 out of 2,300 votes cast went uncounted. The voting machines lost them.

  Remember the hanging chads in Florida? They weren't the only problem the state has had with elections. Some areas used electronic machines, including Miami-Dade County. A study by the American Civil Liberties Union reported that in the Democratic gubernatorial primary in 2002, 8 percent of the votes cast in 31 Miami-Dade precincts was lost.

  California bought the machines, decertified them and changed its mind. It is suing Diebold and once threatened criminal charges on grounds that the company made false claims about the machines. Ohio, one of the election's swing states, is only one of several that have pulled the plug on DREs, as has Missouri. The revelation that Diebold made political contributions to the Republican Party didn't make critics any happier, although Diebold's competitors are Democratic contributors.

  Critics have been stunned by the reaction of Maryland officials, especially Ms.Lamone, the state's administrator, who apparently is now fighting for her job. Officials have defended the machines with a passion that sometimes even exceeded the manufacturer's defense, claiming all the problems have been fixed. Ms. Lamone went to court to defend against a suit brought by a voter group to force the state to change its system and she won.

  "Maryland is acting as though they are the ones selling the machines instead of buying them," Dr. Rubin said. "I think there is some face saving and some embarrassment. If you spend $55 million and someone says it was a bonehead purchase you might get defensive. Some jobs are on the line about this, I believe."

  Del. Jon Cardin (D-11th) defends the state's decision. He is a member of the House Ways and Means Committee and participated in a summer investigation of the voting process in Maryland. He said that of the more than 100 suggestions made to improve the machines and the voting process "almost every single one was complied with by the State Board of Elections." Part of the problem with sorting through the issues is clear differences of opinion among the experts.

  Mr. Cardin says that the rate of error in paper balloting is 7-9 percent, while the error rate with computers is minuscule. (A joint study by the California Institute of Technology and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology disagrees. Paper has the lowest error rate, the study said. Electronic machines were no better than punch cards. Mr. Cardin says he has not seen the study.)

  Mr. Cardin also said breaking into the machines and changing votes would be very difficult and require great computer skills and technical knowledge and is hence very unlikely.

  "I am [more] concerned that there is a contingent of people that have lost confidence in the voting system, not in the integrity of voting," he said.

  There is a process that can mitigate some of the danger: a paper "trail." The DREs would be attached to printers and whenever a vote was cast, the printer would reproduce the vote on paper. The voter could then certify that, unlike the machine Sen. Mikulski played with, the DRE got it right. Also, if there were a need for a recount, there would be a paper record of the votes. By comparing numbers, it would even be possible to detect multiple votes or ballot stuffing.

  Several states have implemented paper trails, and Nevada successfully held an election this summer with paper backup that everyone, including Dr. Rubin, thinks went well. "A paper trail keeps them honest -- if [the paper ballots] are counted," Dr. Rubin said.

  Nevada, however, wasn't using Diebold DREs and Diebold's machines aren't designed for use with printers. Printers also cost money, another reason for resistance by state officials.

  Florida election officials (all Republicans), on the other hand, have barred paper trails and ruled against manual recounts in case a result is contested, a decision that was thrown out by a state court on Sept. 27. If the officials appeal and win, we would never know the true winner of another close Florida election.

  "If we have an election that is really close like we did in 2000 and there are places in which the vote is disputed that were fully electronic, we won't have hanging chads to recount," Dr. Rubin said.

  Another state without paper trails, of course, is Maryland, partly because it is using Diebold's devices, and partly because of the stubborn insistence by Ms. Lamone's office that paper trails are unnecessary.

  Sen. Mikulski, meanwhile, has signed onto a bill in Congress that would make paper backup mandatory but not until 2006. Meanwhile, in many places where results could be very close, it may not be possible to do recounts and we may never know the outcome of the races. The ACM's Dr. Simons thinks the upcoming election may wind up in court again, and this time because of electronic voting. If there is cheating, it may go undetected, she said.

  Dr. Rubin is keeping himself busy at Hopkins and as an expert witness in computer security matters, a very lucrative trade. He also has a raucous family at home with three young kids, including 2-year-old twins. His eldest goes to Krieger Schechter Day School and Dr. Rubin is on the school's computer technology advisory committee. The family belongs to Chizuk Amuno.

  Journalists and voting advocacy groups still regularly consult him

  Dr. Rubin points out that there actually is an almost foolproof voting method, hard to corrupt and capable of producing completely accurate counts: paper.

  Paper can be used in two ways, he said. One is simply having people mark the ballots, put them in boxes for recounting later, the way it was done in the 18th century and as far as anyone knows, still the most exact way of running an election. Cheap too.

  Another possibility, if people insist on 21st-century technology, would be to take the paper ballots, put them in optical scanners and let the scanners accumulate the votes. That might be faster than manual counting, is very accurate, and if there are problems, election officials can always go back and recount the paper ballots.

  Stung a bit by the criticism that he -- an academic -- knew nothing about voting procedures, Dr. Rubin volunteered to be an election judge in Baltimore County in the spring. His experience is that well-run voting places are of great help in protecting the integrity of the vote. He no longer worries about the smartcard problem in efficient polling places. With nine judges and five machines, it would have been easy to spot someone fooling around in the booth.

  One flaw he found worse than he expected is the use in the Diebold plan of a "zero" machine, one of the DREs that would accumulate all the votes in the other computers for counting. "There is no need to attack all the machines," he said. All a hacker had to do was attack that one DRE, especially since that machine is the one that phones in results, making it vulnerable in multiple ways.

  He still doesn't think DREs are a good thing, even with a paper trail. The only machines he prefers would be simple devices that act as intermediaries between the voter and a printer. He is not worried about people hacking the network between the voting machines and the state computer.

  "The biggest concern I have is that someone would rig the machines," Dr. Rubin said. "This would be somebody at the manufacturer or somebody with physical access to the machines who could change the software. Traditional Internet-based hacking is not the issue."

  If jurisdictions use paper trails to DREs, the same manufacturer should not make both the DREs and the printers, he said. That would reduce the chances of a conspiracy or at least broaden the conspiracy and make it more difficult to operate and easier to detect. He admits, however, that when he was a primary voting judge the people using the Diebold DREs loved them.

  "They raved about them to us judges. The most common comment was 'that was so easy.' I can see why people take so much offense at the notion that the machines are completely insecure... I was curious that voters did not seem to question how their votes were recorded.

  "I continue to believe that the Diebold voting machines represent a huge threat to our democracy. I fundamentally believe that we have thrown our trust in the outcome of our elections in the hands of a few companies who are in a position to control the final outcomes of our elections.

  "The more e-voting is viewed as successful, the more it will be adopted," he said, "and the greater the risk when someone decides to actually exploit the weaknesses in these systems.

  "I am not against technology. I drive a car, get on airplanes and ride elevators. However, if the code in any of these was as bad as Diebold's software, I wouldn't. I think that the real difference is the adversary model. If there were trillions of dollars worth of incentives for people to rig elevators so that they crashed, I would be advocating for only using stairs."

  To read more, pick up a copy of the Jewish Times at one of our newsstand locations.

  To purchase a subscription or send a gift subscription, fill out our on-line form.
  

  by markusd on Wed Nov 10, 2004 at 08:10:01 AM PDT

  •  Has this been emailed to Keith Olbermann?

    [e-mail]
    

    by diamondpen on Wed Nov 10, 2004 at 08:12:18 AM PDT

    •  It has now

      Just sent it to him.  Good point.

      by markusd on Wed Nov 10, 2004 at 08:49:24 AM PDT

  •  Thanks!

    Thanks for digging up the origial article!

    Maybe it's old news to you, but this is the first I've heard of it.  

    We need to keep bringing this infomation to the front and not let it be swept under the rug and forgotten.

    I'll take a closer look at lawnorder's writings.

    by ouranos on Wed Nov 10, 2004 at 08:24:04 AM PDT

  •  Speaking as a programmer

    I can tell you that this artice is very slanted towards "conspiracy theories" - not from an objective reporter.

    If I get time I will read it in detail - a quick skim told me to ignore it honestly just from a couple of things I saw.

    1. the DES Key. Big deal - if you get hold of the source code for ANY program before it is actually in production you are going to find a few things like that, because the programmers don't want to go thru hell as they work on it and put in last minute touches. True encryption would be the very last step.

    2. "They used C++ and it is less secure" - that is pretty much bull. C++ is probably the best choice - languages are not inherently more or less "secure". Some are more or less "bug prone" ( make it easier or harder for programmers to error ) but on Windows C++ would probably be the best choice.

    3. "Windows is not secure - they should have used Mac" ---- OK folks, this is a big <ding ding ding> alarm that you are now dealing with the dudes with the tinfoil hats :))

    The security of these systems is MUCH more dependent upon the physical connections ( memory or network or phone connections) than the operating system.

    I doubt that choice of operating system was determined solely by security, but I am pretty sure that the DOD certifies Windows based systems and the "Mac" thing is just a laugh.
    

    by tiponeill on Wed Nov 10, 2004 at 09:14:48 AM PDT

    •  C++

      Using C++ is irrelevant, agreed.

      But DES is not a small matter. It should be 3DES ( which is used in ATMs) or key-pair RSA. By no means should it be something that can be hacked with free utilities in a few seconds.

      by silverbax on Wed Nov 10, 2004 at 09:32:29 AM PDT

      •  do we even know what the DES was used for

        There are many situations where DES is fine. I wouldn't use it to protect anything for very long, but it works wonderfully for communications tasks.

        That being said having the key hardcoded is pretty wrong.

        (Also, the define is very awkwardly written what the heck are those two unmatched parens for?)

        c.

        by cfm on Wed Nov 10, 2004 at 09:57:37 AM PDT

        •  Theories

          C++ is the standard for serious programs -- so I don't see a problem with it.

          C# was probably too new.

          Windows has securities issues -- but the hype has made it look like swiss cheese.  It's not.  More like, ummm, cheddar.  Don't ask.

          But, did they use Access databases??  that would both be strange & understandable.  

          Strange b/c FREAK it's Access! & not known for security.  Understandable, given u want a cheap database & SQL Server on every closed system/machine would've gotten expensive.

          If a machine is isolated (i.e., the modem) & you can trust the officials, it should be secure.

          BUT HOW ABOUT WE GET PAPER TRAILS SO THAT WE DON'T AS MANY ISSUES!

          Bush, What Price Did You Pay?

          by krazypuppy on Wed Nov 10, 2004 at 11:52:55 AM PDT

          •  Access

            Yeah, they use Access. And modem connection. You could just bust into the machine and change the numbers in less than 30 seconds.

            Bush 1534, Kerry 3451 Becomes Bush 3451, Kerry 1534

            And everyone says "the voting totals match up!"

            by silverbax on Wed Nov 10, 2004 at 01:41:19 PM PDT

      •  and speaking of ATMs

        Diebold also manufactures ATMs, so you'd think they'd know better. I can't see a more secure DES strategy as adding any huge cost to development.

        by nowness on Wed Nov 10, 2004 at 11:30:06 AM PDT

      •  But C# would have been better

        Much more security, compiler checks much more, much less freedom to make mistakes.  

        by cedubose on Wed Nov 10, 2004 at 11:38:29 AM PDT

    •  Windows- Macs

      The Windows-Macs thing is pretty preposterous as well, agreed.

      Poorly written software for Mac or Linux is just as hackable as poorly written Windows software.

      by silverbax on Wed Nov 10, 2004 at 09:33:37 AM PDT

      •  Hold on there a minute

        Poorly written software for Mac or Linux is just as hackable as poorly written Windows software.

        Perhaps, but there are several problems with that statement:

        1. There is a lot more Windows software out there, which means there's a lot more poorly written Windows software.

        2. Windows is the "big target." People write exploits for Windows for the same reason thieves rob banks -- that's where the "money" is.

        3. Windows has many more documented exploits already available than Mac or Linux, and it sometimes takes Microsoft years -- YEARS! -- to fix them. And once you gain control of a Windows box, you can pretty much have your way with it. On Unixish systems like Mac OS and Linux, the security model separates system programs from user programs, which at least limits damage to the underlying system. That's not to say that people can't break into the system -- security is something you have to work at, not something that just happens -- but fixes for bugs in Linux, for instance, tend to come within days or sometimes hours of an exploit being discovered because the source code is open and available to inspect, and enough programmers are familiar with it that someone can put together a patch, test it out and release it quickly.

        4. There are distributions of Linux that address security specifically. OpenBSD for instance conducts regular audits of its code with security in mind.

        5. Macs have an inherent advantage in that they use a different chipset than Windows machines (PowerPC vs. Pentium-class). Fewer people know how to do "interesting" things with the PowerPC, so there are fewer exploits that involve problems like buffer overflows where you have to know exactly how to construct the payload.

        If I had to choose a platform for creating something as important as voting software, I would want it to be as secure as possible. I would not hesitate to choose Linux. If I were forced to choose Windows I would want to harden the machines as much as I could, remove any unnecessary software (there's no reason for a voting machine to have Office or Solitaire on it), and hire a team of gray-hat hackers to try to break the system every way I possibly could.

        by Our Man In Redmond on Wed Nov 10, 2004 at 09:55:56 AM PDT

        •  All of these "exploits"

          pretty much relate to the machine being on the internet or a physically accessable network - which I am hoping that these machines aren't.

          If they are fool enough to put their voting macines on the internet, they are not secure no matter what OS they are using.

          (And they desereve to be shot)

          If they are on a secure network or stand alone it really doesn't matter, and you would choose the OS for reasons of practicality.
          

          by tiponeill on Wed Nov 10, 2004 at 10:04:24 AM PDT

          •  Yep, exactly

            If I were designing a voting system I would NEVER allow it to be connected to the Internet at large. But, I would allow the machines to be connected to a central server that would keep track of all the votes in the precinct (running the same hardened, tested software, of course). In that case you still want to guard against someone figuring out that you can erase all the votes in a machine by hitting ctrl-alt-delete, stopping the voting program and starting it up again, or holding down control-space until the machine crashes, or something.

            Oh, and the connection would be cat-5 cable. No wireless.

            Then once the election is completed you fix the vote count onto a tangible medium -- CD-ROM, DVD, paper, what have you -- and send that to the central location for county-wide and ultimately state-wide tabulation.

            by Our Man In Redmond on Wed Nov 10, 2004 at 10:17:43 AM PDT

            •  OK - I change my opinion

              I read the report, and though I think its full of itself with a lot of nitpicky crap, it points out SERIOUS flaws - the most important being the way the individual machines communicate results to the main server
              ( which is NOT evaluated, and which would be my target if I wanted to hack an election)

              It allows for internet connection and insecure dialup and PPP connection.

              I could hack that baby - it is very sad.

              by tiponeill on Wed Nov 10, 2004 at 10:29:54 AM PDT

        •  Nitpick

          OpenBSD is not Linux, it's BSD. Different licenses, different priorities, different communities. Although they're both really good UNIX clones.

          Thanks.

          by maxomai on Wed Nov 10, 2004 at 10:23:58 AM PDT

          •  I know that and you know that

            but I suppose the rest of the DailyKos readership may not know that. :)

            Sorry if I was unclear. My point in bringing up OpenBSD is that it is designed first and foremost with security in mind. As a broad overgeneralization, programs that will run on one Unixish system will run on another, so for something like voting software you should pick one that's secure, and OpenBSD would be an excellent choice.

            by Our Man In Redmond on Wed Nov 10, 2004 at 10:59:09 AM PDT

    •  I agree

      It would be much more informative to know the system and firewall configurations. Otherwise you would have to assume that thousands of individuals across all these precints were involved and at the physical locations. Even if the firewall was not secure, hudreds of conspirators may be required to get access to which ip addresses were used.
      
      
      
      It is pretty informative to read the original report by Dr. Rubin. There, they talk about the security of C++, and the primary concern is that of buffer overflow bugs which can be exploited.  They concluded that no obvious buffer overflow problems were found, but were not ready to say that there were no problems at all.

      by j pratt on Wed Nov 10, 2004 at 09:39:15 AM PDT

    •  Partly agree.....

      Not that this isn't, in some ways, crappy software, but the assumption that this must be deliberate is extremely far-fetched.

      1. DES key - outdated; but not uncommon to see such things.  If you use a true "top down" design strategy, such things are more easily avoided, as you specify these things before writing the code.  But in the real world, not much actually gets done "top-down".  The more likely scenario in the real world is a programmer cranking out a program to get the job done, and he may be familiar with DES, and not necessarily up to date with whatever the latest and greatest encryption method is.  Preferably, they go back and fix it later before putting it into production.  I'm not convinced that happened here.

      2. C++ - In theory, I'm sure there are better language choices for this type of project; but you're going to have a hard time finding many experienced programmers who use them much.  Ada, for example, would probably be well suited for this type of application.  But in the real world, nearly everything of this sort today is done in C, C++, or Java.  Of those, I'd take C++.  People are going to prefer to use what they know, and there will be more programmers out there who know the languages that are most popular, and best suited for a wide variety of applications.

      3. I'm not a fan of Windows.  I do everything on Linux myself now.  But Windows current OSs aren't really "inherently" less secure than anything else.  Something like Windows NT for example would be easily suitable for this project.    And, once you build these machines, you have to sell them to elections supervisors who don't know much about technology, and who are going to be most comfortable with what they're most familiar with.  Once again, alot more people are going to be comfortable with Windows, even if there is a "technically better" solution.  In a system of this scale, with a high need for security, there might even be some advantags to building it on a Sun Solaris platform instead.  But the reality is, the users who have to operate it are going to be more comfortable with Windows.

      4.  That said, to use an unprotected Microsoft Access database as the back end of a production system designed to tabulate hundreds of thousands of votes truly is amaturish.  

      On the whole, I don't believe electronic voting systems are more inherently insecure than others.  Done properly, I think they should be inherently more secure.  After all, it's not really that difficult to lose a box of paper ballots if you really want to either.  The number of people who would be capable of taking advantage of the security flaws in these systems, by comparison is quite small, and the risk of getting caught would still be quite high.    

      Nonetheless, the current generation of machines I think represents a still immature technology.  I do think though that voting machines are an ideal place for the use of open source code, which would allow for independant outside review by qualified experts, to prevent any possibility of fraud in the design, as well as greatly reduce the prevelance of other irregularities.

      by acerimusdux on Wed Nov 10, 2004 at 10:30:30 AM PDT

      •  Far-fetched?

        Not that this isn't, in some ways, crappy software, but the assumption that this must be deliberate is extremely far-fetched.

        No, what's far-fetched is having someone like O'Dell and Ahmanson control the companies that make these machines and that both of them, as outspoken partisan activists, are not questioned about the clear conflict of interest with their obvious non-neutrality. In the case of Ahmanson he's a loony billionaire who finances extreme right-wing advocacy groups pushing for the US to become a Christian theocracy who just happened to involve himself (and a number of confederates) into the business of electronic voting machines. I think it's far-fetched to think he only invested into ES&S and Sequoia because he thought it a good investment.

        by Thumb on Wed Nov 10, 2004 at 02:24:12 PM PDT

    •  Same harded coded DES key since 1977!!!!

      In additional discussion at the first Iowa examination of the AccuTouch system on Nov 6, 1997, it came out that neither the technical staff nor salespeople at Global Election Systems understood cryptographic security. They were happy to assert that they used the Federally approved Data Encryption Standard, but nobody seemed to understand key management, in fact, the lead programmer to whom my question was forwarded, by cell-phone, found the phrase key management to be unfamiliar and he needed explanation. On continued questioning, it became apparent that there was only one key used, company wide, for all of their voting products. The implication was that this key was hard-coded into their source code!

      The minutes of the meeting reflect this discussion but do not mention the cellphone conversation:

          Dr. Jones also expressed concern about data encryption standards used to guarantee the integrity of the data on the machine. DES requires the use of electronic keys to lock and unlock all critical data. Currently all machines use the same key. Dr. Jones stated that this is a security problem. However, the use of a single key for all machines is not a condition that would disqualify the system under Iowa law.

      The Iowa Secretary of State's office routinely forwards the minutes of these meetings to the vendor in question, so they did have both written and verbal notice of this serious security flaw; in addition, I wrote several paragraphs on this topic to the Elections Division of the Secretary of State's office on December 23, 1997:

          [This] raises another issue that reflects a weakness in both the FEC standards and Iowa law. This weakness has been clearly present in all of the electronic reporting systems we have examined this year! The Wyle report takes it for granted that the use of DES encryption plus CRC error checking provides a sufficient guarantee of accuracy and integrity.

          This is not true! First, as the Global representative I talked to informed me, the I-Mark system uses only a single DES key for all voting machines they manufacture. This is comparable to the situation you would expect if all ATM cards issued by some bank had the same PIN!

      Unfortunately, there is no record of whether the Elections Division did or did not forward a copy of this note to the vendor.

      I have frequently used this problem as an example of the weakness of the voting system standards; for example, I used it in my testimony before the House Science Committee in 2001. [See Problems with Voting System Standards]

      I had hoped that this problem has long since been solved! At the examination, I explained to those present that the best practice was to dynamically create encryption keys at the time machines were configured for a particular precinct, so that only those machines were able to report results that would be interpreted as coming from that precinct. I also noted that it was not as important to encrypt the data as it was to use cryptographically secure signatures on the data. The big issue is the authenticity of the data reported from the precinct, not the secrecy, and in fact, in many jurisdictions, precinct totals are printed and posted in public prior to transmission as a measure to ensure that the canvassing process that computes overall vote totals can be audited.

      http://www.cs.uiowa.edu/~jones/voting/dieboldftp.html#answers

      by RoxanneJ on Wed Nov 10, 2004 at 10:37:16 AM PDT

      •  Make that 1997

        Sorry....
        

        by RoxanneJ on Wed Nov 10, 2004 at 11:15:15 AM PDT

  •  Comedy Central

    Dr. Rubin said that when he worked for IBM one summer, there were three pages of notes for every line of code, and no line was added until committees of reviewers approved. Whole pages of the Diebold source code were without annotations or signs of review, something you don't see on professionally written programs, he said.

    As a professional programmer myself, I laughed long and hard over this one. I spent a number of years working at IBM also. Among the tens of thousands of IBM employees, and thousands of software projects, there undoubtedly are ones that are heavily documented. The claim of 3 pages of notes for every line of code is just ludicrous, as is the claim of committees of approvers. Yes, there are formal methodologies and practices in place in IBM as well as other companies, but this kind of exaggeration makes me think the author is just plain looney.

    I have encountered many many programs that run on for pages with little or no documentation, written by supposed professionals. Crappy code is everywhere, folks. A lot of the people who call themselves programmers might be better suited to jobs where they get to say "you want fries with that?".

    Rubin goes to extremes to describe both his experience at IBM and the state of the Diebold code. He gives the impression that both extremes are unique. But that just ain't the way it is out there.

    All in all, the article was good for a laugh.

    by kensa on Wed Nov 10, 2004 at 12:23:36 PM PDT

    •  SEI: ISO 9000 quality for SW

      Ford and the other Big 3 carmakers require ISO 9000 certified quality procedures or they won't even TALK to a supplier. How come Diebold gets selected without even being worth an ISO 9 ?

      (Yeah I know it's a different standard but my point is they are 1000 times inferior to an ISO 9000 certified company and nevertheless were selected for one of our country's most important task!).

      It's like if the president of the country, suddenly needs some surgery done and instead of sending experts and taking him to the best hospitals we send him to my garage to be treated by my 3 yr old playing doctor!!!

      There are standards equivalent to ISO 9000 to certify software and it's software design process. For instance, Carnegie Mellon university has SEI

      "ISO 9000" for Software
      
      The Software Engineering Institute (SEI)
      
      The Software Engineering Institute (SEI) is a federally funded research and development center sponsored by the U.S. Department of Defense through the Office of the Under Secretary of Defense for Acquisition, Technology, and Logistics

      The SEI works with leading-edge software developers and acquirers to apply and validate the new and improved practices. SEI staff members help the DoD solve specific software engineering and acquisition problems by applying these practices.

      The SEI's core purpose is to help others make measured improvements in their software engineering capabilities and to develop the right software, delivered defect free, on time and on cost, every time.

          * To be successful, integrated teams of developers, acquirers, and software users must have the necessary software engineering skills and knowledge to ensure that the right software is delivered to end users.
      
          * 'Right software' implies software that satisfies requirements for functionality, performance, and cost throughout its lifetime
      
          * 'Defect-free' software is achieved either through exhaustive and endless rework or by developing the code right the first time. The SEI's body of work in technical and management practices is focused on developing it right the first time,,which results not only in higher quality, but also in predictable and improved schedule and cost"

      http://www.sei.cmu.edu/about/about.html

      by lawnorder on Wed Nov 10, 2004 at 03:29:09 PM PDT

  •  I had to delete the diary

    Diary police was aftert me because I was over my quota :(

    Thanks for keeping a copy!

    The link and the SEI references are still available on one of my diaries:
    The real Question: Why are we still w/ Diebold

    by lawnorder on Wed Nov 10, 2004 at 03:31:38 PM PDT

•  It seems old.

  The Diebold stuff was made available over a year ago, as I recall.

  The quoted line is actually invalid source code, it's been mangled. I assume it is meant to be a C preprocessor statement.

  Anyway, yeah, using a simple, statically defined DES key is very stupid, and very poor security. With today's computing power, it's not that hard to do a brute-force attack (i.e. trying all possibilities) on that.

  Weak security means that it might have been possible to crack Diebold machines, not that it actually happened, of course.
  

  by Frank on Wed Nov 10, 2004 at 08:10:24 AM PDT

  •  It is a couple years old, but

    it isn't only Diebold machines that need to be examined.  ESS, Sequoia, and at least one other company provide machines.  Also it isn't only the voting machines themselves where problems might occur, but also in the tabulation process.

    The major problems in the current process are:

    • There are no standards utilized.  It's all private software.

    • The software needs to be open source.

    • There is NO public oversight.  These companies are beholden to their investors, not to the public.

    • Quasi-related, but still an issue IMHO, voting officials like Blackwell have a conflict of interest when they involved in a campaign (in this case for Bush) AND acting as the public elections referee.   When did that type of situation become acceptable?

    Elections need to be completely transparent, and the major issue is that Diebold, ESS et al are protected by the DCMA, are private companies, and are not transparent.

    by Calee4nia on Wed Nov 10, 2004 at 08:29:56 AM PDT

  •  here is

    The original report. The stuff about the DES KEY is on page 15 of the pdf file, with the correct code.

    by j pratt on Wed Nov 10, 2004 at 08:33:00 AM PDT

•  I followed

  I followed the links to senderberl.com, and then the links from there, but couldn't get to Dr. Rubins original presentation.  I got to an interview, but he didn't mention anything particular about encryption keys or source code.

  Another thing is that this "line of code" is a preprocessor macro that doesn't make much sense.  There should be a space between the "#define" and "DESKEY" part, 'h' is not a hexidecimal character, there are two open paranthesis brackets that are not closed, and a quote character that is also missing its partner.
  

  by j pratt on Wed Nov 10, 2004 at 08:13:55 AM PDT

  •  I think the

    guy who typed in the diary simply didn't insert the required space, he must not be a programmer. This version of the article has the space:

    http://www.texasturkey.us/backup/ballot.html

    by Seemabes on Wed Nov 10, 2004 at 09:36:53 AM PDT

    •  I found

      Dr. Rubins original report.
      #define DESKEY ((des_key*) "F2654hD4")
      It is on page 15.

      by j pratt on Wed Nov 10, 2004 at 09:44:10 AM PDT

•  This is all crap

  This is all crap.  So what if the code can be broken?  Do we have any evidence whatsoever that it was broken?

  Anybody who buys into this level of paranoid, delusional hysteria is not going to be elected to anything.

  Please, no more hysterical bleating.  It's embarrasing.

  by dataguy on Wed Nov 10, 2004 at 08:15:32 AM PDT

  •  Wouldn't the Ideal Hacking Be One

    that left no traces?  What makes you think there's still evidence to be found?

    by lysias on Wed Nov 10, 2004 at 08:40:50 AM PDT

    •  They how do you prove it?

      n/t

      by Delaware Dem on Wed Nov 10, 2004 at 08:53:57 AM PDT

      •  Two possible ways to prove it

        1. Machine and network logs. Usually there are some clues.

        2. Actual statisticians. Corporate fraud is usually found by bad ass statisticians, not programmers or accountants. And this type of fraud would be easier to detect than most embezzlment.

        Why are some people so afraid to verify these results?

        by silverbax on Wed Nov 10, 2004 at 09:36:06 AM PDT

        •  Third way: Computer forensic analysis

          There are companies who specialize in tracking down lost data on hard drives and the like. It can be as easy as undeleting a file (files are seldom deleted on a computer; rather, their space is marked as being free and can be written to, overwriting anything previously there) and as complex as scanning the surface of the hard disk for "remnants" of old, overwritten files. Usually they do this in criminal fraud cases, hacking cases and the like, but in an investigation of possible vote fraud they might be able to find evidence that the file containing the voting information changed radically between one time point and the next.

          by Our Man In Redmond on Wed Nov 10, 2004 at 10:02:20 AM PDT

          •  You are right

            Of course, you are correct.

            

            by silverbax on Wed Nov 10, 2004 at 10:10:58 AM PDT

            •  It happens once in a while

              but not often enough if you believe my family. :)

              by Our Man In Redmond on Wed Nov 10, 2004 at 10:18:45 AM PDT

  •  It means the machines should not be used.

    As simple as that.

    by SadEagle on Wed Nov 10, 2004 at 09:04:16 AM PDT

  •  Not the point

    The point is we are using machines that are not fraud proof. We cannot prove someone hacked in, necessarily, but we cannot prove someone did not. THIS, my friend, is the point.  The point is the system needs to be fixed.... if we, as a group don't work to fix it, I will NEVER EVER give another hard earned dollar to a Democratic candidate or make phone calls.  That's that.  They want to continue taxation without representation.... good for them but not with my support.

    by citizengeo on Wed Nov 10, 2004 at 09:16:28 AM PDT

  •  DATAGUY is the bggest bushbaby on dKos...

    he wrote on 4 Nov . . .

    " Bush won a mandate
    by dataguy
    [Subscribe]

    Thu Nov 4th, 2004 at 13:30:23 PST
    Bush won a mandate.

    He won more EV than Kerry.

    We won more PV than Kerry.

    He won re-election.  THAT IS A MANDATE.

    We can whine, complain, bitch and moan.  But Bush will still have a mandate.

    He will have one because HE BELIEVES HE HAS ONE AND HE WILL ACT LIKE IT.  AND HE HAS THE VOTES.

    We must STOP immediately this whining about mandates.  We must BEGIN discussing WHAT the mandate allows. "

    FU*K off dataguy ---- you suck!

    by trippinsf on Wed Nov 10, 2004 at 09:27:58 AM PDT

    •  So which Man Date did Bush take?

      Sven or Fabio?

      Other than the ravings of the RW echo chamber, exactly what mandate did he receive? What did he run on?

      From the election I see that the "mandate" that George Bush received from the voters is the He's not a John Kerry. The Bush campaign was not a campaign of positive reasons to vote for him, but a lot of darts thrown to tear down John Kerry.

      If he had campaigned on "I will return sanctity to marriage." or "I will prevent all abortions." I could see a mandate for those things. But that's not what he ran on. I defy anyone to find anything about "values" that GWB positively stated he was going to do during his second term.

      The only man date he got was a private evening with Karl Rove.

      c.

      by cfm on Wed Nov 10, 2004 at 10:05:12 AM PDT

  •  So what if the code can be broken?

    Huh? So what if the code can be broken? Why bother to vote?
    The future integrity of our election process depends on us not only developing a secure voting system but one that can be verified with a paper trail.

    Dismissing examinations and questions as "silly" is ridiculous.

    by Alizaryn on Wed Nov 10, 2004 at 12:40:29 PM PDT

  •  Hacktocracy

      What is the use of campaigning when the better hacker can win? Debate issues? Why bother? We don't need strategists and speechwriters; we need the tools of the trade: engineers and cryptographers.
      How we choose our government is critical.

    by Bryce in Seattle on Wed Nov 10, 2004 at 02:08:43 PM PDT

  •  Cause for suspicion?

    When private citizens are allowed control over the machines that count our elections, and are not only openly partisan but partisan activists as well, then something is seriously wrong with the system. When these same people go to court to protect and are granted sole proprietary rights to the software codes that counts our votes for the purpose of preventing outside audit, then something is seriously wrong with our judiciary. When these same people receive 1/1000th the press attention that would be given if George Soros or Michael Moore were to own those same companies (no, make that 1/1,000,000th), then something is seriously wrong with our press.

    When anyone should worry about looking paranoid or delusional by pointing out the inherent potentials for conflict of interest by allowing openly partisan activists to count our votes in private (and then put the burden of proof on us to prove vote tampering), then something is seriously wrong with society.

    Or maybe there's just something seriously wrong with you.
    

    by Thumb on Wed Nov 10, 2004 at 02:33:58 PM PDT

•  Isn't the bigger question..

  has this been fixed/corrected?  Old news or not, anyone know what has happened regarding this since?  

  by bushoutnow on Wed Nov 10, 2004 at 08:16:38 AM PDT

  •  If These Machines Were Used Last Week

    without the problem having been corrected, that would not be old news.

    by lysias on Wed Nov 10, 2004 at 08:41:46 AM PDT

  •  Diebold has since claimed

    that they have improved the encryption.  I don't recall seeing an explanation anywhere of what that means.
    

    by Hunter on Wed Nov 10, 2004 at 10:17:36 AM PDT

    •  Encryption secrecy

      If I were a vendor who had made improvements in the security of my software, I would announce simply that I'd improved it. To provide any more details than that would be giving a head start to the hackers (who may very well find it out anyway).

      On the other hand, if I were a vendor who had not made improvements, but wanted people to think that I had, I'd make the exact same announcement.

      by kensa on Wed Nov 10, 2004 at 12:11:13 PM PDT

•  So the fact that it's old means?

  It's old news but was never acted upon? This electonic voting thing is blowing my mind. I feel like a blind little old lady who has a criminal mastermind living in my house robbing me blind but I'm too weak to stop him. I know he's doing it, I know he'll keep doing it until I'm dead, but I can't do a thing about it.

  The silence on this RAPE of our democracy is just staggering.

  by Hrubec on Wed Nov 10, 2004 at 08:16:50 AM PDT

•  Well, Maybe it's old News

  But it's the first I've heard of it.  Which just goes to show that these come out, but not everyone pays attention.

  Definitely mail to Olberman.

  by Gingerandspice on Wed Nov 10, 2004 at 08:28:55 AM PDT

•  OK, two questions come to mind...

  1.  Was it hacked?  Is there any way to tell?  Does this code result in any characteristic pattern of output?

  2.  Where were these systems used?  Do the results from any/all of them look suspicious?

  As you can guess, I'm pretty ignorant about this stuff.
  

  by KTinOhio on Wed Nov 10, 2004 at 08:45:41 AM PDT

  •  We _might_ be able to compile it and see

    If the source is available, along with any proprietary libraries that Diebold may have written for it, then someone in the blogosphere should be able to compile it.

    If we can compile it, then we can start running it and start logging outputs.  Something like Mercury's loadrunner could be used to input a large enough number of votes so as to simulate at least a state level election.

    The problem is that this is probably just main.cpp, which isn't going to do us a whole lot of good, unless Diebold's programmers are so lame that they just put everything in a single source file.

    by tomaxxamot on Wed Nov 10, 2004 at 09:58:08 AM PDT

•  Yes, bad coding

  Yes, it's bad coding that needs to be fixed. However, if one were to perpetrate a LARGE-scale voting fraud, the most likely place is in the central tabulation -- not machine-by-machine. To do this on a large scale with the voting machines would require a visit to every voting machine, in the precincts, where scrutiny would likely be high.

  The holes in the central tabulation systems, especially GEMS, represent the much bigger story.

  by davinic on Wed Nov 10, 2004 at 08:56:42 AM PDT

  •  exactly

    Republicans may be dumb, but not dumb enough to steal the election by hacking hundreds of individual voting machines. You're just exposing yourself to too much risk.

    If you were going to do something this dastardly, where if you got caught you were guaranteed to loose the election and go to jail, you'd do it in a way to minimize your exposure to risk.  Hence, at centralized locations.
    

    by reax on Wed Nov 10, 2004 at 09:04:06 AM PDT

    •  HAHA

      Too funny.

      A. They won't "lose the election" if they get caught, it will just go to court and eventually get thrown out.

      B. Centralization is indeed the issue, but not so much as the entire lack of need for e-Voting in the first place.

      I don't trust it, and I never will. Voting is inherently flawed, but with tight races you get to see the flaws up close and personal.

      All e-Voting is doing is making people lose faith in the electoral process, which depress turnout, which benefits Republicans.

      by Monkey on Wed Nov 10, 2004 at 09:24:15 AM PDT

      •  Steppford Dem Thinking

        If it were left to people with your attitude there wouldn't have ever even been a democracy with a Bill of Rights and Constitution.  

        We put people on the Moon for Christ's sake, I don't think it's that great of a leap of imagination to think that we might be able to have a reasonably clean electoral process.

        Imagine!

        by Einsteinia on Wed Nov 10, 2004 at 01:08:25 PM PDT

        •  You assume

          That we ever had a reasonably clean electoral process.

          It wasn't until 1964 that a sizeable chunk of the population was allowed to vote AT ALL. Ergo, before that every single election was flawed.

          Counting votes is hard work. Usually, a candidate can overwhelm these ever-present innaccuracies, and overcome the "margin of uncertainty".

          Evoting is a bad idea. Period.

          Paper ballots work, have worked, and should continue to work. There will be flaws but it's much less open to manipulation.

          by Monkey on Wed Nov 10, 2004 at 01:29:09 PM PDT

          •  I Agree

            that we should go back to paper, or at least have paper trails.  

            But, here's the difference between current fraud methods and those of days of yore, never as easy it been as easy to steal 1 vote a it is to a million--as the other Recommended Diary on the flaw in Diebold source code proves.

            We should not support the campaign of  deflection that continues to try to conflate the thefts of the past with this Nuclear blast of a Theft.  

            Cheney said if Kerry won, there'd be a terrorists attack on our democracy, and in Lakoff's metaphorical "frame-the-argument" parlance, I'd say Cheney was absolutely right!

            by Einsteinia on Wed Nov 10, 2004 at 01:41:27 PM PDT

      •  ha, what?

        A. They won't "lose the election" if they get caught, it will just go to court and eventually get thrown out.

        If they were caught in the act before the election, they would.  Not for legal reasons, but getting caught for election fraud doesn't exactly do wonders for your reelection campaign.

        B. Centralization is indeed the issue, but not so much as the entire lack of need for e-Voting in the first place.

        I'm not saying there's nothing wrong with e-Voting.  I don't like it, and think there should at least be a paper trail.  I'm saying that if you're looking for fraud, e-Voting is a potential red herring.

        You need to think like someone trying to steal the election.  Imagine the RNC has put you in charge of stealing Florida for '04.  Your options are:

        a)  Tamper with hundreds of voting machines, to alter the results they'll output on election day.  You can't possibly do this on your own, so you'll need to enlist the help of quite a few people.  Each person helping you is someone who could potentially rat you out to the media for their own personal glory.  And each tampered with voting machine is leaving a trail of concrete evidence.  All it takes is for one curious computer wiz to get his hands on one of your tampered with Diebold machines.

        b)  Just alter the results at one of the central reporting points.  You only need to do this in one or two counties to swing the election in your favor.  Maybe just "accidentally" add an extra zero here and there.  No small army of helpers to rat you out, and no trail of physical evidence.

        by reax on Wed Nov 10, 2004 at 03:39:13 PM PDT

  •  Exactly

    Its the difference between robbing a string of banks or hacking into the central computer that tallies transactions and transferring the money into your account. The former takes time and has a lot of risk, the latter you can do from the comfort of your own home (or the local internet cafe) if you're smart.

    by misty on Wed Nov 10, 2004 at 09:44:36 AM PDT

•  I would never propose something so unethical...

  but couldn't some computer-savvy member of our community go in now and change the results of the election using this information?

  That would sure make the recounts interesting, if they ever occur.

  Hedupitsass County, FL
  Registered Voters: 374
  Bush: 12
  Kerry: 245,621
  Nader: 12,567

  by unavoter on Wed Nov 10, 2004 at 08:57:40 AM PDT

  •  I'm afraid...

    ...this is exactly what it's going to take.

    by Geheimbundler on Wed Nov 10, 2004 at 09:13:53 AM PDT

  •  LOL that would quickly get congress to act!

    If someone hacked up the system now in favor
    of Kerry at least we'd get some action real fast.

    Congress don't see to care at all when these Ronco  e-voting systems potentially threw the election their way.

    I'm reading through the posts and I'm very surprised at the comments regarding architecture from clearly computer people.

    Issues like inheritance, virtual functions etc.
    to me, do make C++ more vunerable than say assembly.
    Windows is notorious for buffer overflow code,
    everywhere.  Only PHP is a problem in Linux that I am aware of for buffer overflow vunerability.

    Microsoft Access is absolutely incompetent.  It's completely insecure, takes 30 seconds to hack in a different vote.  Just amazing...so amazing it's hard to believe anyone is that incompetent and more it was done intentionally.  

    One can hack this from being a voter, from being a programmer, by attacking the tabulator...in almost every link in the system chain.  Incredible considering we have the NASDAQ, ATM, banking transfer and so forth that is secure.  If any of these systems were so poorly designed, there would be an uproar, congressional hearings, civil lawsuits and criminal litigation.

    What is most suspect is Diebold making ATM
    machines.  To me, that they would release such an incompetent design, when they must know the issues, is suspect in and of itself.

    Finally, where are our US engineering standards bodies in all of this?  How can a technical election system be designed without their approval, when they determine engineering standards in this country?

    Finally, I would like to see a national election reform so the entire country moves to the Oregon system.  It is so much more fair on multiple fronts.  Voting is paper ballot by mail, thus long lines are avoided, intimidation, suppression impossible, the disabled and those working 2 and 3 jobs do not have to risk loss of income or taking care of their kids to get to the polls and can finally it allows logically analysis  in making voting decisions.  This is very useful for some of the "propaganda" written ballot proposals.
    You must study them in detail to figure out what they are really doing.

    by Robert Oak on Thu Nov 11, 2004 at 01:48:02 PM PDT

•  IT MAY BE OLD NEWS

  but not to me and certainly not to mainstream america. This information certainly warrants an investigation of all electronic voting systems.
  If this news is 2 years old and the encryption was broken in 1997 then there is a 5 year window in which elections might easily have been tampered with had these machines been used.

  DEMAND A FULL INVESTIGATION!!!!!!!!!

  P.S.  We might even have a majority in the senate!!!!

  by obgynlover on Wed Nov 10, 2004 at 09:04:13 AM PDT

•  Tip Jar

  Cool! I see this diary has been promoted, despite some negative resposnes like, "old news" and "hysterical bleating. It's embarrasing."

  This is my first Recommended Diary.  Thanks:

  The Following Users Have Recommended This Diary:
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  by ouranos on Wed Nov 10, 2004 at 09:13:59 AM PDT

  •  Break

    Well, it ain't "breaking."

    by DavidNYC on Wed Nov 10, 2004 at 09:19:24 AM PDT

•  Come On, People

  Wake up.

  This is a complete non-issue.

  There is a very simple solution:

  If you are faced with a voting computer in your booth, break it.

  Smash it. Pour water or coffee on it. Do whatever you can to render it inoperable.

  Get arrested. Publicize what you did and why.

  If you're not willing to go to jail for this, then you're just not that dedicated to democracy.

  There is no reason to use a voting computer, ever. Anyone who tells you there is is lying to you.

  Machines cannot be trusted.

  Actually, in my opinion, any mechanism of counting votes is inherenly flawed, but that's another story.

  Machines are opaque to users. So you get a paper receipt. So what? I could have the part counting it remember what your ID was and count it however I wanted, despite what your paper said. I could have it switch between counting legit and counting my way at any time, with the flick of a switch.

  Paper receipts don't mean crap. You can't trust the system as a whole, so you can't trust any part of it.

  Other, modern countries do without e-Voting. Why not the US?

  by Monkey on Wed Nov 10, 2004 at 09:20:11 AM PDT

  •  Monkey - this is the best idea I've heard so far

    Pour glue on it.  Piss on it. Whatever it takes.  I agree.  You a smarty.

    by citizengeo on Wed Nov 10, 2004 at 10:40:23 AM PDT

  •  destroying votes

    if this means destroying other people's votes, I say that isn't cool. If you're the first voter of the day, then sure if you want to make your point and get arrested.

    by Elizabeth D on Wed Nov 10, 2004 at 11:49:05 AM PDT

    •  Destroying Votes?

      Come on...you're not getting it.

      This SYSTEM is broken. It can't be trusted. Ergo, all votes cast on it are suspect. It should be abolished altogether.

      Any vote put into it is a vote that can be manipulated. Better to throw out the whole idea in favor of a better system.

      by Monkey on Wed Nov 10, 2004 at 01:33:25 PM PDT

  •  Solve Problem by Publishing Votes

    Publish all votes with identifying numbers on the Internet.  Then voters can verify that their votes came out as they intended.

    by lysias on Wed Nov 10, 2004 at 01:00:09 PM PDT

    •  Solves NOTHING

      If I wanted to steal your vote, with an opaque system I can change it and you would NEVER know.

      Every time you look up a given number, it reports what you thought you voted. Every time I count them, I get the result I want.

      If someone wants to take your vote away, why are you insisting on making it easier?

      by Monkey on Wed Nov 10, 2004 at 01:31:23 PM PDT

      •  If the votes in a precinct are correctly published

        then presumably that means the totals reported also have to be correct.

        by lysias on Wed Nov 10, 2004 at 01:43:33 PM PDT

      •  Once the vote is tabulated

        make the entire vote available to whomever wants it.  Daily Kos or the DNC or whomever could host the database and allow voters to type their serial number at their leisure.  If they see that their receipt does not match their vote they can bring this to the democratic office and scream fraud.

        by Bri on Wed Nov 10, 2004 at 02:06:40 PM PDT

    •  Publish 120million Voter ID's under Candidate Name

      I like this but as a programmer Verificationis the name of the game.

      Business would not use computers if they were as vulnerable as you suppose.

      Yes they can be vulnerable But they don't HAVE to be - thats the purpose of the verification code.

      We need to take evoting as seriously as Fortune 500 payroll code.

      Numerous reports are produced and cross-checked with others to verify system output.

      And yes this costs money but a modern multi-million $ business could not operate without it.
      Finally we CAN run data through the code AFTER THE FACT and find out what the code does in a full regression test. Thats what we have to do.

      by lili on Wed Nov 10, 2004 at 01:37:24 PM PDT

  </