Exposing Diebold's Flaws

Just in case anyone missed seeing this the last time:




The main findings of our study are:

1. Malicious software running on a single voting machine can steal votes with
little if any risk of detection. The malicious software can modify all of the
records, audit logs, and counters kept by the voting machine, so that even
careful forensic examination of these records will find nothing amiss. We have
constructed demonstration software that carries out this vote-stealing attack.

2. Anyone who has physical access to a voting machine, or to a memory
card that will later be inserted into a machine, can install said malicious
software using a simple method that takes as little as one minute. In practice,
poll workers and others often have unsupervised access to the machines.

3. AccuVote-TS machines are susceptible to voting-machine viruses -
computer viruses that can spread malicious software automatically and invisibly
from machine to machine during normal pre- ! and post-election activity. We have
constructed a demonstration virus that spreads in this way, installing our
demonstration vote-stealing program on every machine it infects.

4.
While some of these problems can be eliminated by improving Diebold's software,
others cannot be remedied without replacing the machines' hardware. Changes to
election procedures would also be required to ensure security.

Read the dialogue between Diebold and the scientists here.