Diebold rebuts Princeton study

[sabra]

I cross-posted this in GD: http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=364x2136493

http://newsblogs.chicagotribune.com/news_theswamp/2006/09/diebold_stands_.html#more

<snip>

In its press release, the company explained why, in its view, such manipulation would be impossible.

"The unit has security software that was two generations old, and to our knowledge, is not used anywhere in the country," said Dave Byrd, president of Diebold Election Systems in a written statement.

"Normal security procedures were ignored," said Byrd. "Numbered security tape, 18 enclosure screws and numbered security tags were destroyed or missing so that the researchers could get inside the unit. A virus was introduced to a machine that is never attached to a network.”


“By any standard - academic or common sense - the study is unrealistic and inaccurate,” he said.

“...Every voter in every local jurisdiction that uses the AccuVote-TS should feel secure knowing that their vote will count on Election Day,” is how Byrd ends his statement.

[Lerkfish]

1. what you gonna believe? us republicans or princeton university?

c'mon, you gonna believe us or yer lyin eyes?


sheesh..

[RaleighNCDUer]

2. So they're saying then that the only people who could really

hack their system are their own technicians.

That's very comforting.

[cui bono]

3. He said our votes would count...

he didn't say for whom.

[WillYourVoteBCounted]

4. Diebold didnt' want to swear to it in North Carolina

Bear can say all kinds of things, but I bet Diebold's CEO isn't willing
to sign a sworn affadavit to it.

Diebold got in trouble in California for lying about what software
was on the voting machines there
http://www.ss.ca.gov/executive/press_releases/2004/04_030.pdf

Diebold didn't want to stand behind their word in NC:

With Nowhere Left to Hide, Diebold Pulls Out of North Carolina
December 22, 2005
Following a flurry of litigation that found EFF fighting both alongside and against the state Board of Elections, Diebold on Thursday withdrew from the North Carolina procurement process, ceding the state’s voting machine business to rival ES&S.

In November, Diebold filed suit against the North Carolina Board of Elections in an effort to be exempted from a state requirement that vendors place into escrow (among other things) all source code “that is relevant to functionality, setup, configuration, and operation of the voting system.” The code would be available to the Board of Elections and the chairs of the state political parties for review so that they could look for security vulnerabilities, to the extent they wanted to make such an effort. Diebold argued to the Superior Court that it simply couldn’t meet that requirement, at least in part because they relied so extensively on third party software for critical system functions. EFF intervened in the case on behalf of local voter integrity advocate Joyce McCloy and succeeded in convincing the judge to dismiss the case, leaving Diebold on the hook for criminal and civil penalties if they failed to comply.
more here
http://www.eff.org/deeplinks/archives/004285.php

Ask Bear if Diebold's CEO will back him up on what he says:

Friday, December 23. 2005
The real reason Diebold ran
Yesterday was the deadline for signing the affidavit mentioned here:

§ 163-165.9A. Voting systems: requirements for voting systems vendors; penalties.
...
(3) The chief executive officer of the vendor shall sign a sworn affidavit that the source code and other material in escrow is the same being used in its voting systems in this State. The chief executive officer shall ensure that the statement is true on a continuing basis.
...
b) Penalties. - Willful violation of any of the duties in subsection (a) of this section is a Class G felony. Substitution of source code into an operating voting system without notification as provided by subdivision (a)(2) of this section is a Class I felony. In addition to any other applicable penalties, violations of this section are subject to a civil penalty to be assessed by the State Board of Elections in its discretion in an amount of up to one hundred thousand dollars ($100,000) per violation. A civil penalty assessed under this section shall be subject to the provisions of G.S. 163-278.34(e)."
http://blackboxvoting.com/s9/index.php?/archives/59-The-real-reason-Diebold-ran.html

[Land Shark]

5. And Velvet Revolution called their bluff on it, asking for truly ind. exam

(permission given to reprint entire press release) See end for response to Diebold.

Ilene Proctor PR [phone]
Washington, DC
September 14, 2006

ELECTIONS CAN BE STOLEN ON DIEBOLD VOTING MACHINES WITH A VIRUS

In May, Princeton University computer scientists obtained a Diebold system with cooperation of www.VelvetRevolution.us, an umbrella organization of more than 100 election integrity groups. For four months, scientists conducted a top secret analysis of the system’s hardware, software and firmware and have now issued an explosive report blasting the vote machines as unsecure and dangerous. Such an independent study has never been allowed by either Diebold or elections officials.

The study reveals that a computer virus can loaded into an electronic voting machine to flip votes for opposing candidates. According to the study, a vote for George Washington can be easily converted to a vote for Benedict Arnold, and neither the voter nor the election officials administering the election would ever know what happened. The virus could also be written to spread undetected from one machine to another. The study was released along with a videotape demonstration at http://itpolicy.princeton.edu/voting. Here are the main findings:
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.
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.
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.
Yesterday, Diebold spokesman, Mark Radke, challenged the study asserting that their new Diebold machines are much more secure than the one tested by Princeton.

VR believes that none of the Diebold vote machines are secure and now challenges Diebold to back up its claim by providing each version of its voting machines to the Princeton team for a complete, unfettered, and independent analysis.

www.velvetrevolution.us