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1st link:
by Kathy Dopp
Diebold says:
"The unit has security software that was two generations old, and to our knowledge, is not used anywhere in the country."
Yet:
In March, 2006 the same severe Diebold security problems were discovered in Emery County, Utah by BlackBoxVoting and Bruce Funk that had been originally discovered in the late 1990s and in early 2003 by RABA Technologies in MD and by others previously. (See BlackBoxVoting TSx Study and see Doug Jones Response)
Diebold advertised dozens of non-existant office locations in the white pages in dozens of states, and originally delivered a mixture of used, rejected voting machines to Utah for the price of new ones. (See Utah Count Votes)
Why should we believe Diebold now? Diebold could prove its claims are true by allowing independent thorough examination of its voting system. (Not by The Election Center - an Association of Election Officials and Voting Machine Vendors favored by Maryland's Election Director, Linda Lamone because it includes the same election insiders who pushed through unauditable paperless, fundamentally flawed, hackable voting systems despite public and expert opposition).
The Princeton team noted that Diebold's hardware also needs to be fixed.
Diebold says:
"Normal security procedures were ignored. Numbered security tape, 18 enclosure screws and numbered security tags were destroyed or missing so that the researchers could get inside the unit."
Yet:
The Diebold machine does not have to be taken apart to access the flash memory or memory cards. All can be accessed via the SmartCard serial port, serial port on the back, or modem connection. Diebold voting machines do not use available common-sense security measures and did not even remove the development tools from its operating system, making its system less secure than an electronic toy.
Insiders are always the biggest threat to any voting system. Insiders include all Diebold staff and election officials and workers.
The Princeton team demonstrated that election stealing software can be inserted without ignoring any security procedures, by simply accessing a memory card prior to an election. Princeton even showed that a savy voter could possibly buy cards and vote multiple times.
To anyone observing an election, election rigging would look exactly like a normal election. (See the Princeton film)
Diebold says:
"A virus was introduced to a machine that is never attached to a network."
Yet:
The Princeton team did not network the machines and the virus can be transferred from one machine to another on a memory card, such as whenever the software is updated or when an election supervisor installs the election definition files, or if someone like a poll worker has one minute's access to the machine.
Diebold says:
"The current generation AccuVote-TS software - software that is used today on AccuVote-TS units in the United States - has the most advanced security features, including Advanced Encryption Standard 128 bit data encryption, Digitally Signed memory card data, Secure Socket Layer (SSL) data encryption for transmitted results, dynamic passwords, and more."
Yet:
Edward Felten, director of the Center for Information Technology Policy and professor of computer science at Princeton, claimed that the new safeguards still don't ensure security. "Just because they use a digital signature, just because they use encryption, that's a check-box approach that doesn't pass muster in any security analysis," he said. Felten also noted that encryption doesn't prevent an attack of the kind used in the study because the encryption key is present in the machine.
"The malicious software has the full run of the computer. It has access to everything."
Diebold says:
"In addition to this extensive security, the report all but ignores physical security and election procedures. Every local jurisdiction secures its voting machines - every voting machine, not just electronic machines. Electronic machines are secured with security tape and numbered security seals that would reveal any sign of tampering."
Yet:
Malicious software can be most easily installed during the normal course of storing, maintaining, updating, or conducting elections without raising any suspicion. It is virtually impossible to secure these machines using the security procedures in use today in election jurisdictions.
BlackBoxVoting, Princeton, and Avi Rubin, among others, have shown that Diebold's "security tape" is easy to tamper with, without leaving any noticeable evidence. New security tape is also available for purchase. Third, The security tape can be avoided altogether by removing a few screws. (See Avi Rubin's day as a poll worker
Diebold says:
"Secure voting equipment, proper procedures and adequate testing assure an accurate voting process that has been confirmed through numerous, stringent accuracy tests and third party security analysis."
Yet:
Only persons uneducated in computer science would buy that logic. Diebold deliberately avoided having its modified operating system software federally tested. No amount of testing would assure a tamper-free election, as Princeton explained in its movie clip and is further explained in this testimony before the US Congress by DAVID WAGNER, PH.D. COMPUTER SCIENCE DIVISION UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA, BERKELEY, SEPTEMBER 11, 2006 in Question #1 of Responses to Questions for the Record Submitted by Chairman Ehlers and Chairman Boehlert...
Diebold says:
"Every voter in every local jurisdiction that uses the AccuVote-TS should feel secure knowing that their vote will count on Election Day."
Yet:
To secure the accuracy of election results we must audit - manually count - voter verifiable paper ballot records associated with sufficient vote counts to give a 99% probability of detecting any outcome-altering vote miscount.
Banks, businesses, and churches are subjected to independent audits. Election outcomes determine who controls budgets in the millions to trillions of dollars, yet are not sufficiently audited in any state.
Kathy Dopp
The National Election Data Archive
Dedicated to accurately counting elections.
The National Election Data Archive will be publicly releasing a new mathematical method of calculating vote count audit amounts that will ensure election outcomes are accurate.
2nd link:
image © Utah Count Votes
Doug Jones Response to Diebold Response to Princeton Examination of Diebold Voting Machines
Princeton Study of Diebold Voting Machines
Diebold Election Systems Response to the Princeton University AccuVote-TS Analysis
Diebold Contact Info: Mark Radke of Diebold Election Systems, 330-490-6633
Computer Scientist Doug Jones is funded by the National Science Foundation to study voting systems as part of project ACCURATE.
Diebold says:
> A virus was introduced to a machine that is never attached to a network.
Doug Jones says:
This response dodges the question, expressing a complete misunderstanding of the nature of viruses by implying that viruses are irrelevant if there is no network. First, viruses originally emerged as a threat in the era of the Apple ]< personal computer, where they were spread on floppy disks that were hand carried between machines. What matters, clearly, is the presence of communication, not wires. Communication by hand carried disks, or PCMCIA cards, creates an environment in which the possibility of viruses is worthy of investigation.[br />
Diebold says:
> The current generation AccuVote-TS software - software that is used today on AccuVote-TS units in the United States - has the most advanced security features, including Advanced Encryption Standard 128 bit data encryption, Digitally Signed memory card data, Secure Socket Layer (SSL) data encryption for transmitted results, dynamic passwords, and more.
Doug Jones says:
Diebold has not released to the public sufficient information to allow an assessment of the competence with which these measures were applied. As a result, we cannot determine whether these are applied in an effective way, or whether they are as ineffective as the use of DES was back in 1997.
Diebold says:
> In addition to this extensive security, the report all but ignores physical security and election procedures. Every local jurisdiction secures its voting machines - every voting machine, not just electronic machines. Electronic machines are secured with security tape and numbered security seals that would reveal any sign of tampering.
Doug Jones says:
See Avi Rubin's report. See the report from Cleveland on the frequency with which these measures were used effectively. See Ed Felton's comments on the denial of service attack that security seals offer. I commented on the same with regard to the ES&S iVotronic in my comments on the pre-election tests in Miami in 2004.
If you take seals seriously, you must inventory seal numbers at the time applied and insist on recording the seal numbers at the time they are broken. Auditors must routinely check that these records are properly maintained, and any seal found broken should disqualify the machine it is attached to. Jurisdictions don't do this, and the seals being used are so flimsy that if they did, someone could shut down a polling place by careful use of their thumbnail. In sum, the use of seals, as it is being done now, is about cosmetics, not about security.
Diebold says:
> Secure voting equipment, proper procedures and adequate testing > assure an accurate voting process that has been confirmed through numerous, stringent accuracy tests and third party security > analysis.
Doug Jones says:
Diebold owes the public a list of the third party security analyses that have found their system to be secure. None of the analyses I'm aware of drew positive conclusions. Certainly the redacted SAIC study, and the Compuware study, and the Raba study all found major flaws. I've spoken with authors of the Raba study who were livid about the way Diebold lobbied them during the writing of their report to soften the wording, and then misrepresented the results in their public relations campaign that followed. The SAIC study is still not available in unredacted form. Does this mean that it still documents weaknesses that have yet to be corrected?
Diebold says:
> Every voter in every local jurisdiction that uses the AccuVote-TS should feel secure knowing that their vote will count on Election Day.
Doug Jones says:
Indeed. I agree completely. They --should-- feel secure. Or at least, that is what we owe them. I wish we could follow through on that promise.
Doug Jones
jones@cs.uiowa.edu
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