Problems with The Alameda County (CA) (Sequoia) Report

[Wilms]

Problems with The Alameda County Report

10/13/06

by Joe Hall

Alameda county released a security vulnerability assessment of their voting system last Thursday, conducted by a firm called Pacific Design Engineering. Thad Hall over at Election Updates has a new post, "ALAMEDA COUNTY E-VOTING REPORT", in which he says:

snip

The most important take-away is in a table in the report that outlines a series of vulnerabilities that voting systems have to attack, both in precincts and in the central office. It then compares the vulnerabilities of a Diebold system, as documented in various reports, with the Sequoia system. The study finds that the Sequoia system is only vulnerable to one of the 12 precinct attacks and one of the five central attacks and both can be mitigated through security procedures. By contrast, the Diebold system has been found to be vulnerable to 13 of 15 precinct attacks and 4 of 5 central attacks.

snip

I was able to obtain a copy of the report last Thursday and then scanned and OCR'd it (unfortunately, I've been too busy to post about it until now). You can get the report here (or in a more permanent location from the ACCURATE web site, here).

(Doug Jones has some draft comments on this report here: "Critique of the Alameda County Report".)

snip

My take-away from this report is somewhat different than Prof. Hall's. I believe this report provides us with more evidence -- this time in voting technology provided by a vendor other than DESI -- that the current ITA process overseen by NASED is completely broken. The report reveals that Sequoia isn't the only vendor that has equipment with significant and avoidable vulnerabilities associated with secure systems design and poor use of cryptography.

snip/piles of links

http://josephhall.org/nqb2/index.php/2006/10/13/alasequoia