Article: Rigged Election Possible ? ... posted from another forum

[eyeswideopened]

http://story.news.yahoo.com/news?tmpl=story&u=/sv/riggedelectioncalled...
http://www.siliconvalley.com/mld/siliconvalley/7849117.htm

Rigged election called possible
Sun Feb 1, 5:47 AM ET

By Elise Ackerman, Mercury News

Could someone hack an election?

Yes, according to a report presented to the Maryland Legislature Thursday by Raba Technologies, a consulting firm. Maryland hired Raba's computer scientists to hack into its Diebold electronic voting system. The researchers found that software vulnerabilities could allow a saboteur to vote multiple times or tamper with computer code to steal an election.

"The team was able to demonstrate the ability to switch two candidates," the Raba scientists warned legislators. "Consequently, the voter appeared to vote for the candidate of his choice but he actually voted for another candidate."

System defended Nevertheless, Diebold marketing director Mark Radke claimed in an interview that the Raba researchers "found the system to be very secure." Voters, he said, can be confident their ballots will be counted correctly.


-snip-

[Dogmudgeon]

1. False security

From what I understand, the Diebold and ESS systems are based on Microsoft's SQL Server 7.0. The primary hack would come through the database itself, not the front end; though no doubt a front-end hack would be fairly easy to do.

In spite of the Microsoft bashers, I think that every data-only system is vulnerable to hacking. The way to handle electronic voting is to produce copies of the vote -- one for the voter, and one for the district to verify against the machine. This way, there would be two systems of redundancy; such a system could also be implemented over the internet with the "receipt" being mailed to the voter.

The only system that would possiblly be more secure would be a public-key system, but that would require all voters to have a public key. In other words, mandatory computer use. That would not go over very well.

I'm sure Bev Harris has addressed all these issues by now. But the fact is that if the 2004 election can be hacked, it will be hacked. The stakes are high -- so are the rewards.

--bkl