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HavenWorks.com/election/voting-machine-risks - Voting Machine News |
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Election News  2008
Election
2006
Election{ Emphasis Added } "In California, David Jefferson, a computer scientist at Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory who consults with the state on its elections, said he was "stunned when he found out" about the vulnerability identified in the Utah test and agreed with the "frequently expressed opinion that this is the worst vulnerability that we have ever seen."" -WashingtonPost ""If Diebold had set out to build a system as insecure as they possibly could, this would be it," says Avi Rubin, a Johns Hopkins University computer-science professor and elections-security expert." -MSNBC/Newsweek ""When you're using a paperless voting system, there is no security," says David Dill, a Stanford professor who founded the election-reform organization Verified Voting." -MSNBC/Newsweek ""It's the most severe security flaw ever discovered in a voting system," said Michael I. Shamos, a professor of computer science at Carnegie Mellon University who is an examiner of electronic voting systems for Pennsylvania...." -NYTimes ""This is the barn door being wide open, while people were arguing over the lock on the front door," said Douglas W. Jones, a professor of computer science at the University of Iowa...." -NYTimes "Aviel Rubin, a professor of computer science at Johns Hopkins University,
did the first in-depth analysis of the security flaws in the source code
for Diebold touch-screen machines in 2003. After studying the latest problem,
he said: "I almost had a heart attack. The implications
of this are pretty astounding."" -NYTimes
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Virginia
- 
Electronic
- 
Voting
Machines - Election
2006 - "Some
Voting Machines Chop Off Candidates' Names: Computer
Glitch Affects Voters in 3 Jurisdictions; Error Cannot Be Fixed by Nov.
7 [2006 election]." ... "U.S. Senate candidate James Webb's last name has
been cut off on part of the electronic ballot used by voters in [the Virginia
state cities of] Alexandria, Falls Church and Charlottesville because of
a computer glitch that also affects other candidates with long names, city
officials said yesterday." ... "The error shows up only on the summary
page, where voters are asked to review their selections before hitting
the button to cast their votes. Webb's full name appears on the page where
voters choose for whom to vote." ... "Thus, Democratic candidate Webb will
appear with his first name and nickname only -- or "James H. 'Jim' " --
on summary pages in Alexandria, Falls Church and Charlottesville, the only
jurisdictions in Virginia that use balloting machines manufactured by Hart
InterCivic of Austin." -By Leef Smith
-WashingtonPost
Secret
- Electronic
- Voting
Machines - 
Company
- Hackers
- 
Technology
- Election
2006 - 
Politics
- 
Maryland
- "Electronic
Voting Machines Could Skew Elections: Researchers,
Candidates Have Little Confidence in Machines Designed to Make Elections
Easier to Call." ... "Cheryl Kagan, a former Maryland Democratic legislator,
was shocked when she opened her mail Wednesday morning." ... "Inside, she
discovered three computer discs. With them was an anonymous letter saying
the discs contained the secret source code for vote-counting that could
be used to alter the votes cast through Maryland's new electronic voting
machines." ... ""My understanding is that with these disks a malicious
person could skew the outcome of an election," Kagan said." ... "Diebold,
the company that makes the voting machines, told ABC News, "These discs
do not alter the security of the Diebold touch-screen system in any way,"
because election workers can set their own passwords." ... "But ABC News
has obtained an independent report commissioned by the state of Maryland
and conducted by Science Applications International Corporation revealing
that the original Diebold factory passwords are still being used on many
voting machines." ... "The SAIC study also shows myriad other security
flaws, including administrative over-ride passwords that cannot be changed
by local officials but can be used by hackers or those who have seen the
discs." (1, 2)
-By Jake Tapper, Rebecca Abrahams, and Eduardo Sunol
-ABCNEWS.com
2006
Election - Computer
- Voting
Machine - Hacking
- Politics
- "Elections
Easy to Steal, Say Computer Scientists: Princeton
Team Shows How a Computer Virus Might Do It; Voting Machine Maker Objects."
... "In 2001, [Princeton University professor Edward W.] Felten raised
hackles in the music industry by showing how hard it was to keep a recording
from being copied. He's written software to show how easily private computer
networks can be breached." ... "And now he's violated the sanctuary of
the voting booth by hacking into the electronic voting machines that were
designed to prevent election fraud." ... "Felten and two Princeton graduate
students, Ariel Feldman and Alex Halderman, created a computer virus that
they say could "steal" votes from one candidate and give them to another
— and go undetected." ... ""You have to be a good programmer — not a genius
— to do this," Halderman said. "I believe a good programmer could reproduce
our virus without very much effort."" (1, 2)
-By Ned Potter -ABCNEWS.com
Hacking
- Electronic
- Voting
Machine - Technology
- Business
- 2006
Election - Maryland
- "Worse
to Come in Fall Elections, Officials Fear." ... "As
officials investigated the human errors that disrupted Maryland's primary
election, there were renewed fears yesterday that electronic malfunctions
could cause even greater problems in November." ... "Computer scientists
at Princeton University released a study, including a video, that demonstrated
how they were able to hack into the type of electronic voting machines
used in Maryland and install malicious software that could sway an election.
The machines' manufacturer swiftly denounced the study as "unrealistic
and inaccurate."" ... "Meanwhile, frustrated election judges and voters
continued to report widespread trouble with voting apparatuses during Tuesday's
primary -- machines that froze, access cards that stopped working and computerized
voter lists that crashed. The glitches led to long lines at many polling
places and caused some voters to worry that their ballots had not been
recorded properly, if at all." ... "Edward W. Felten, a professor of computer
science and public affairs, said that he and two of his graduate students
spent several months studying a Diebold AccuVote-TS voting machine. They
were easily able to break into the machine and insert malicious software,
he said." ... ""The malicious code can steal votes in a manner that's undetectable
or nearly undetectable," Felten said. "And the code can spread like a virus
from one machine to another."" (1, 2)
-By Christian Davenport, Miranda S. Spivack and Cameron
W. Barr -WashingtonPost
Hacking
- Voting
Machines - 2006
Election - Computer
- Politics
- "Princeton
professor raises alarm over electronic voting, hacks test machine."
... "A Princeton University computer science professor added new fuel Wednesday
to claims that electronic voting machines used across much of the country
are vulnerable to hacking that could alter vote totals or disable machines."
... "In a paper posted on the university's website, Edward Felten and two
graduate students described how they had tested a Diebold AccuVote-TS machine
they obtained, found ways to quickly upload malicious programs and even
developed a computer virus able to spread such programs between machines."
... "The researchers say they designed software capable of modifying all
records, audit logs and counters kept by the voting machine, ensuring that
a careful forensic examination would find nothing wrong." ... "The programs
were able to modify vote totals or cause machines to break down, something
that could alter the course of an election if machines were located in
crucial polling stations." ... "It was also possible to design a computer
virus to spread malicious programs to multiple machines by piggybacking
on a new software download or an election information file being transferred
from machine to machine, Felten said." -AP
via -USATODAY
Political
- Hacking
- Technology
- Business
- Voting
Machine Risks - 
Utah- 
California
- 
Pennsylvania
- "Debating
the Bugs of High-Tech Voting: Test of Software in
Machines Renews Security Concerns." ... "A coalition of voting rights activists
and prominent computer scientists argues that some of the machines are
not sufficiently secure against tampering and could result in disputed
elections, while voting machine vendors and many election officials say
that view is exaggerated." ... "The latest dispute occurred several weeks
ago after it was discovered at a test in Utah that someone with a reasonable
knowledge of computer code could gain access to and tamper with the system
software on a popular brand of voting machine manufactured by Diebold Election
Systems. The developments prompted California and Pennsylvania to send
urgent warnings to counties that use Diebold's touch-screen voting systems
to take additional steps to secure them." ... "In California, David Jefferson,
a computer scientist at Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory who consults
with the state on its elections, said he was "stunned when he found out"
about the vulnerability identified in the Utah test and agreed with the
"frequently expressed opinion that this is the worst vulnerability that
we have ever seen."" -By Zachary A. Goldfarb
-WashingtonPost
2006
Election - Political
- Hacker
- Technology
- "Will
Your Vote Count in 2006? 'When you're using a paperless
voting system, there is no security,' says Stanford's David Dill." ...
"Just when you thought it was safe to go back into the voting booth, here
comes more disturbing news about the trustworthiness of electronic touchscreen
ballot machines. Earlier this month a report by Finnish security expert
Harri Hursti analyzed Diebold voting machines for an organization called
Black Box Voting. Hursti found unheralded vulnerabilities in the machines
that are currently entrusted to faithfully record the votes of millions
of Americans." ... "How bad are the problems? Experts are calling them
the most serious voting-machine flaws ever documented. Basically the trouble
stems from the ease with which the machine's software can be altered. It
requires only a few minutes of pre-election access to a Diebold machine
to open the machine and insert a PC card that, if it contained malicious
code, could reprogram the machine to give control to the violator. The
machine could go dead on Election Day or throw votes to the wrong candidate.
Worse, it's even possible for such ballot-tampering software to trick authorized
technicians into thinking that everything is working fine, an illusion
you couldn't pull off with pre-electronic systems. "If Diebold had set
out to build a system as insecure as they possibly could, this would be
it," says Avi Rubin, a Johns Hopkins University computer-science professor
and elections-security expert." -By Steven Levy 20060529Issue
-MSNBC/Newsweek
Noteworthy
- Voting
Machines - Science
- Hacker
- Politics
- Business
- 2006
Election - 2008
Election - Pennsylvania
- California
- 
Iowa
- "New
Fears of Security Risks in Electronic Voting Systems."
... "With primary election dates fast approaching in many states, officials
in Pennsylvania and California issued urgent directives in recent days
about a potential security risk in their Diebold Election Systems touch-screen
voting machines, while other states with similar equipment hurried to assess
the seriousness of the problem." ... ""It's the most severe security flaw
ever discovered in a voting system," said Michael I. Shamos, a professor
of computer science at Carnegie Mellon University who is an examiner of
electronic voting systems for Pennsylvania, where the primary is to take
place on Tuesday." ... ""This is the barn door being wide open, while people
were arguing over the lock on the front door," said Douglas W. Jones, a
professor of computer science at the University of Iowa, a state where
the primary is June 6." ... "The new concerns about Diebold's equipment
were discovered by Harri Hursti, a Finnish computer expert who was working
at the request of Black Box Voting Inc., a nonprofit group that has been
critical of electronic voting in the past." ... "Aviel Rubin, a professor
of computer science at Johns Hopkins University, did the first in-depth
analysis of the security flaws in the source code for Diebold touch-screen
machines in 2003. After studying the latest problem, he said: "I almost
had a heart attack. The implications of this are pretty astounding."" -By
Monica Davey with contributions by Gretchen Ruethling and John Schwartz
-NYTimes
2006
Election - 
Texas
- 
Illinois
- 
Florida
- 
Law
- "Primary
voting-machine troubles raise concerns for '06."
... "Problems using voting machines in the Texas and Illinois primaries
this month have reinforced fears that the 2006 elections may be beset with
glitches." ... "More than 30 million Americans will be voting on unfamiliar
equipment this year, after modernization required by the Help America Vote
Act. Congress passed the law in 2002 to address problems stemming from
the 2000 presidential election in Florida." -By Jim
Drinkard -USATODAY
- 
- "Electronic
voting firm acknowledges hacker break-in." ... "A
Bellevue, Wash., company developing security technology for electronic
voting suffered an embarrassing hacker break-in that executives think was
tied to the rancorous debate over the safety of casting ballots online."
... "VoteHere confirmed Monday that U.S. authorities are investigating
a break-in of its computers months ago, when someone roamed its internal
computer network. The intruder accessed internal documents and may have
copied sensitive software blueprints that the company planned eventually
to disclose publicly." -By Ted Bridis
-AP via -USATODAY
- "Voting
into the void: New touch-screen voting machines
may look spiffy, but some experts say they can't be trusted." ... "A fast-talking,
fact-toting woman who can recount dozens of stories of voting machines
going disastrously haywire, (computer science professor Rebecca) Mercuri
goes into a region whose election has been held up and proceeds to hold
forth. Mercuri tells everyone she can, from election judges to county supervisors
to the local media, that the supposedly "state-of-the-art" machines they've
all been sold are nothing but a "a bill of goods."" ... "Mercuri's chief
complaint with the touch-screen system is that its inner workings are often
a complete secret. When a voter touches the screen to make a choice, there
is no confirmation that the machine has actually registered the correct
selection. In the old punch-card and fill-in-the-circle paper systems,
voters can see their choice marked on paper. And in the event of a recount,
election officials can, as a last resort, manually count those slips of
paper. Since the new electronic systems leave no paper trail, there's no
chance of a recount." (1, 2,
3)
-By Farhad Manjoo -Salon
