"Security Of E-Voting Systems Seriously Questioned; Computer researchers claim to have found 'critical flaws' in software used for U.S. electronic voting.(Diebold Election Systems)." InformationWeek (July 24, 2003): NA. Student Resource Center - Gold. Thomson Gale. Centennial High School (MD). 20 Dec. 2006 http://find.galegroup.com/ips/infomark.do?&contentSet=IAC-Documents&type=retrieve&tabID=T003&prodId=IPS&docId=A105829596&source=gale&srcprod=SRCG&userGroupName=elli29753&version=1.0.
"Three computer researchers from the Information Security Institute at Johns Hopkins University, with help from a computer scientist at Rice University, say they've uncovered vulnerabilities in the software purportedly used by Diebold Election Systems. As a result, one person can cast multiple votes, elections can be delayed, the anonymity of voters can be breached, and cast votes can be modified or even deleted, the researchers say." Later in the article it followed this statement later on by saying, "a 15-year-old computer enthusiast could make counterfeit smart cards that the system would accept as legitimate." As a computer enthusiast I find this information shocking that someone with basic computer skills could change the out come of and election if they felt the need.
This article also brings up the fact of how even after these flaws were exposed Maryland payed 56.6 million dollars for 11,000 Diebold touch screen systems. These were the same voting systems that have been bashed due to their security flaws. "A few months ago we didn't know what was going on inside these machines because no one would tell us, says David Dill, a computer science professor at Stanford University. Dill says he hopes the research will shed light on potential security problems with electronic voting. There are election officials that just don't want to hear about the potential security problems. They won't listen." David Dill has often been quoted in articles about voting flaws.
Did Maryland make a smart deal spending a record 56.6 million on these systems?
Wednesday, December 20, 2006
Tuesday, December 12, 2006
Hacking Democracy (Artifact Two)
http://www.hbo.com/docs/programs/hackingdemocracy/synopsis.html HACKING DEMOCRACY was directed by Simon Ardizzone and Russell Michaels; produced by Simon Ardizzone, Robert Carrillo Cohen and Russell Michaels; executive producers, Earl Katz, Sarah Teale and Sian Edwards; edited by Sasha Zik. For HBO: supervising producer, John Hoffman; executive producer, Sheila Nevins.
This movie is a recent documentary on HBO after watching this movie I decided to dive further into this topic and this movie really was my inspiration to do this. "In the 2000 presidential election, an electronic voting machine recorded minus 16,022 votes for Al Gore in Volusia County, Fla. While fraud was never proven, the faulty tally alerted computer scientists, politicians and everyday citizens to the very real possibility of computer hacking during elections." This is one of the many interesting fact that they brought up during this documentary. They also went into Florida Central Office and found out in one of the poling area Bush had received minus votes also.
Bev Harris after asking some voting officials about some of the information on some of the touch screen when the refused to answer her question she decided to find out for herself. "In the course of her research, which unearthed hundreds of reported incidents of mishandled voting information, Harris stumbled across an "online library" of the Diebold Corporation, discovering a treasure trove of information about the inner-workings of the company's voting system." Bev Harris a normal citizen with no real computer experience was able to find this very classified information.
"Harris brought this proprietary "secret" information to computer security expert Dr. Avi Rubin of Johns Hopkins University, who determined that the software lacked the necessary security features to prevent tampering. Her subsequent investigation took her from the trash cans of Texas to the secretary of state of California and finally to Florida, where a "mini-election" to test the vulnerability of the memory cards used in electronic voting produced alarming results." These systems with such huge gaps in security are the ones that are used a crossed thousands of counties and a crossed 32 states. David Dill a computer science professor at Stanford University said ""lots of people involved in writing the software, and lots of people who could have touched the software before it went into that machine. If one of those people put something malicious in the software and it's distributed to all the machines, then that one person could be responsible for changing tens of thousands of votes, maybe even hundreds of thousands, across the country."
"Ultimately, Bev Harris' research proved that the top-secret computerized systems counting the votes in America's public elections are not only fallible, but also vulnerable to undetectable hacking, from local school board contests to the presidential race. With the electronic voting machines of three companies - Diebold, ES&S and Sequoia - collectively responsible for around 80 percent of America's votes today, the stakes for democracy are high. " This flaw is huge flaw and now no one knows how they will do it but voters and candidates alike are ready to see what will happen in 2008.
Now I ask you and myself....
Do you think that by 2008 we will have a system that will be flawless for the election?
If not when do you think that they will have a flawless system?
This movie is a recent documentary on HBO after watching this movie I decided to dive further into this topic and this movie really was my inspiration to do this. "In the 2000 presidential election, an electronic voting machine recorded minus 16,022 votes for Al Gore in Volusia County, Fla. While fraud was never proven, the faulty tally alerted computer scientists, politicians and everyday citizens to the very real possibility of computer hacking during elections." This is one of the many interesting fact that they brought up during this documentary. They also went into Florida Central Office and found out in one of the poling area Bush had received minus votes also.
Bev Harris after asking some voting officials about some of the information on some of the touch screen when the refused to answer her question she decided to find out for herself. "In the course of her research, which unearthed hundreds of reported incidents of mishandled voting information, Harris stumbled across an "online library" of the Diebold Corporation, discovering a treasure trove of information about the inner-workings of the company's voting system." Bev Harris a normal citizen with no real computer experience was able to find this very classified information.
"Harris brought this proprietary "secret" information to computer security expert Dr. Avi Rubin of Johns Hopkins University, who determined that the software lacked the necessary security features to prevent tampering. Her subsequent investigation took her from the trash cans of Texas to the secretary of state of California and finally to Florida, where a "mini-election" to test the vulnerability of the memory cards used in electronic voting produced alarming results." These systems with such huge gaps in security are the ones that are used a crossed thousands of counties and a crossed 32 states. David Dill a computer science professor at Stanford University said ""lots of people involved in writing the software, and lots of people who could have touched the software before it went into that machine. If one of those people put something malicious in the software and it's distributed to all the machines, then that one person could be responsible for changing tens of thousands of votes, maybe even hundreds of thousands, across the country."
"Ultimately, Bev Harris' research proved that the top-secret computerized systems counting the votes in America's public elections are not only fallible, but also vulnerable to undetectable hacking, from local school board contests to the presidential race. With the electronic voting machines of three companies - Diebold, ES&S and Sequoia - collectively responsible for around 80 percent of America's votes today, the stakes for democracy are high. " This flaw is huge flaw and now no one knows how they will do it but voters and candidates alike are ready to see what will happen in 2008.
Now I ask you and myself....
Do you think that by 2008 we will have a system that will be flawless for the election?
If not when do you think that they will have a flawless system?
Wednesday, December 6, 2006
Artifact One
Tadayoshi Kohno, Adam Stubblefield, and Aviel D. Rubin members of the Johns Hopkins University Information Security Institute and Dan S. Wallach Department of Computer Science of Rice University were the ones behind the document "Analysis of an Electronic Voting System."
http://www.eff.org/Activism/E-voting/20030724_evote_research_report.pdf was where I found this document. After reading the first page of this document I found out some really interesting facts. They mentioned how in 2003 Maryland payed 55.6 million dollars for touch screen voting systems. After our current 2006 elections it would be hard to believe many Marylanders don't know how unreliable those systems were. People wait outside during peak voting hours for as much as two hours at a time leaving family, children and jobs behind. After those two hours they finally got in the building (if they had the will power to stay outside for that long.) They still had still had to wonder if their vote was counted.
Under section 2, they have in this document, they have exactly how the Diebold DRE voting machine works. Including how at the end of the polling period how the administrator of the voting area goes about retrieving the results. Even as a non-voter (because of my age) I have still had experience with how unreliable the system is. At 12 noon I was outside the polling area, helping the candidates I was supporting by campaigning. At exactly noon, one of the other people who was standing outside campaigning for votes when into the building removing all support stickers from her clothing went into the building. She was hired to go in and collect the mid-day results. She came back to where we were all standing and talking and enjoying some hot chocolate and coffee and told us the results. She told us that a 16 point difference between the number of voters who signed in and the number of votes cast. You can imagine our surprise.
"In order to use (or create) an administrator card, the attacker must know the PIN associated (or to be associated) with the card. Because the system’s use of smartcards was poorly designed, an adversary could easily learn the necessary information, thereby circumventing any security the PIN might have offered." This quote was taken directly from the file itself explaining a major gap in the voting system and how anyone with enough information, know how or patience could hack into the system and change anything they want to the votes that are cast.
This artifact is so full of information I could have come up with pages and pages, unfortantly I am in a time crunch so I was not able to dive into this information further. Please expect to see more information out of this group breaking document in my next post.
http://www.eff.org/Activism/E-voting/20030724_evote_research_report.pdf was where I found this document. After reading the first page of this document I found out some really interesting facts. They mentioned how in 2003 Maryland payed 55.6 million dollars for touch screen voting systems. After our current 2006 elections it would be hard to believe many Marylanders don't know how unreliable those systems were. People wait outside during peak voting hours for as much as two hours at a time leaving family, children and jobs behind. After those two hours they finally got in the building (if they had the will power to stay outside for that long.) They still had still had to wonder if their vote was counted.
Under section 2, they have in this document, they have exactly how the Diebold DRE voting machine works. Including how at the end of the polling period how the administrator of the voting area goes about retrieving the results. Even as a non-voter (because of my age) I have still had experience with how unreliable the system is. At 12 noon I was outside the polling area, helping the candidates I was supporting by campaigning. At exactly noon, one of the other people who was standing outside campaigning for votes when into the building removing all support stickers from her clothing went into the building. She was hired to go in and collect the mid-day results. She came back to where we were all standing and talking and enjoying some hot chocolate and coffee and told us the results. She told us that a 16 point difference between the number of voters who signed in and the number of votes cast. You can imagine our surprise.
"In order to use (or create) an administrator card, the attacker must know the PIN associated (or to be associated) with the card. Because the system’s use of smartcards was poorly designed, an adversary could easily learn the necessary information, thereby circumventing any security the PIN might have offered." This quote was taken directly from the file itself explaining a major gap in the voting system and how anyone with enough information, know how or patience could hack into the system and change anything they want to the votes that are cast.
This artifact is so full of information I could have come up with pages and pages, unfortantly I am in a time crunch so I was not able to dive into this information further. Please expect to see more information out of this group breaking document in my next post.
Tuesday, November 28, 2006
What I Want to Know
I want to find out how and if it would ever for it to be possible for a system of voting to be completely flawless. I want to find out what the pretenses are that the system would have to follow for a election to be considered the "prefect system". I also think it would be really like to find out if a flaw in the system was to take place what really can be done about it? Would they be able to go back and do a complete and total recount. Meaning having everyone off school again and everyone going into work late and repaying the pole workers. Would they do it? Or would they tell the loser of the election that they are sorry about the results and the possibility that they really won the election but they will have to try again next year. Its a sore spot in the world of politics and many people try and avoid the topic when it comes up or they are completely the oppostite and bring up the topic at the drop of a hat. I am really excited to do the research on this topic and to possibly learn the answers to the questions above.
Friday, November 17, 2006
What I Know
Voting flaws have been a big issue in the past few elections. Many people are worried over the flaws that may be involved when it comes to voting. No matter the outcome of elections, the losing party often suggests voting flaw issues are a problem. I know that when the democratic candidate lost the presidential election in 2004 it sparked recounts all over the United States. This past election on November 2, it was a sweep for the Democrats even before the final results were announced. Immediately, there was speculation from both sides over the legitimacy of the voting machines and practices. I am trying to figure out a way, if it is possible, for voting to ever be truely flawless. When going to the poles many people are worried about the constitutional rights that they are provided as American citizens. As a citizen, you are given the ability to cast a secret ballot, but do you really think that not requiring a ID and just trusting that people are going to be honest is a good idea? That personally doesn't make much sense to me, but I do think that someway somehow we can have a trustworthy, safe, constitutional voting system. The voter's trip to the poles should be an easy and safe experience that doesnt have them wondering for the next two years if their vote was counted.
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