Bugtraq mailing list archives
Re: Diebold Global Election Management System (GEMS) Backdoor Account Allows Authenticated Users to Modify Votes
From: Dana Hudes <dhudes () hudes org>
Date: Tue, 28 Sep 2004 20:46:36 -0400
On Monday 27 September 2004 21:33, Enrique A. Chaparro wrote:
On Fri, 24 Sep 2004 10:01:59 -0400 Second objection is: Even if you were able to overcome the first objection (wich, in case "b" above, will solve the issue for simpler methods), a secure system requires _huge_ amounts of computing power (if you're thinking of large scale elections, i.e. elections involving millions of voters) Regards, Enrique
There is no need, and I believe it undesirable , to have every individual vote tallied at a central site (a mirror , disaster-recovery, site is not solving the problem in question). A hierarchical system is appropriate. furthermore while exit polls influence the election and so on we also do not want local partial results disclosed. It may be desirable for updates on a periodic basis to be forwarded as a 'sign of life'. The problem is that if these intermediate results exist news agencies will want to publicize them and that would influence the election in-progress. Already we have seen partial dsenfranchisement and lower voter turnout in Alaska and esp. Hawaii since the polls are open there after the polls in Eastern US close. On a technical level each voting machine should tally its results. The next level up is the Election District. Results of each voting machine are summarized by the ED node and reported up to the location master node for the polling place (again I leave out redundancy; we assume measures are taken for reliability). The results of each polling place are grouped by county. It is not clear to me that any state-level elected office has a district spanning multiple counties. Similarly I do not believe that any congressional seat spans state borders. Therefore it should suffice to tabulate state-wide and federal elections on a county-by-county basis for each state at a state-wide master node. In short, as has been pointed out a tree approach makes the problem of vote counting quite tractable.
Current thread:
- Re: Diebold Global Election Management System (GEMS) Backdoor Account Allows Authenticated Users to Modify Votes, (continued)
- Re: Diebold Global Election Management System (GEMS) Backdoor Account Allows Authenticated Users to Modify Votes Rainer Duffner (Sep 22)
- Re: Diebold Global Election Management System (GEMS) Backdoor Account Allows Authenticated Users to Modify Votes Mike Ely (Sep 22)
- Re: Diebold Global Election Management System (GEMS) Backdoor Account Allows Authenticated Users to Modify Votes Claudius Li (Sep 25)
- Re: Diebold Global Election Management System (GEMS) Backdoor Account Allows Authenticated Users to Modify Votes Seth Breidbart (Sep 27)
- RE: Diebold Global Election Management System (GEMS) Backdoor Account Allows Authenticated Users to Modify Votes David Schwartz (Sep 28)
- Re: Diebold Global Election Management System (GEMS) Backdoor Account Allows Authenticated Users to Modify Votes Adam Shostack (Sep 29)
- RE: Diebold Global Election Management System (GEMS) Backdoor Account Allows Authenticated Users to Modify Votes David Schwartz (Sep 29)
- Re: Diebold Global Election Management System (GEMS) Backdoor Account Allows Authenticated Users to Modify Votes Seth Breidbart (Sep 29)
- Re: Diebold Global Election Management System (GEMS) Backdoor Account Allows Authenticated Users to Modify Votes Claudius Li (Sep 25)
- Re: Diebold Global Election Management System (GEMS) Backdoor Account Allows Authenticated Users to Modify Votes Enrique A. Chaparro (Sep 28)
- Re: Diebold Global Election Management System (GEMS) Backdoor Account Allows Authenticated Users to Modify Votes Dana Hudes (Sep 29)
- Re: Diebold Global Election Management System (GEMS) Backdoor Account Allows Authenticated Users to Modify Votes Patrick J. Kobly (Sep 28)
- Re: Diebold Global Election Management System (GEMS) Backdoor Account Allows Authenticated Users to Modify Votes Gene Cronk (Sep 22)
- Re: Diebold Global Election Management System (GEMS) Backdoor Account Allows Authenticated Users to Modify Votes steve menard (Sep 22)
- Re: Diebold Global Election Management System (GEMS) Backdoor Account Allows Authenticated Users to Modify Votes Barry Fitzgerald (Sep 23)
- Re: Diebold Global Election Management System (GEMS) Backdoor Account Allows Authenticated Users to Modify Votes Jose Rey (Sep 25)