How to Hack an Election (NYT Editorial: 31 Jan 04)

[Dave Farber <dave () farber net>]

-----Original Message-----
From: GLIGOR1 () aol com
Date: Sat, 31 Jan 2004 15:23:51 
To:dave () farber net
Subject: How to Hack an Election (NYT Editorial: 31 Jan 04)

 
 January 31, 2004TODAY'S EDITORIALS How to Hack an Election 
oncerned citizens have been warning that new electronic voting technology being rolled out nationwide can be used to 
steal elections. Now there is proof. When the State of Maryland hired a computer security firm to test its new 
machines, these paid hackers had little trouble casting multiple votes and taking over the machines' vote-recording 
mechanisms. The Maryland study shows convincingly that more security is needed for electronic voting, starting with 
voter-verified paper trails.
 
When Maryland decided to buy 16,000 AccuVote-TS voting machines, there was considerable opposition. Critics charged 
that the new touch-screen machines, which do not create a paper record of votes cast, were vulnerable to vote theft. 
The state commissioned a staged attack on the machines, in which computer-security experts would try to foil the 
safeguards and interfere with an election.
 
They were disturbingly successful. It was an "easy matter," they reported, to reprogram the access cards used by voters 
and vote multiple times. They were able to attach a keyboard to a voting terminal and change its vote count. And by 
exploiting a software flaw and using a modem, they were able to change votes from a remote location.
 
Critics of new voting technology are often accused of being alarmist, but this state-sponsored study contains 
vulnerabilities that seem almost too bad to be true. Maryland's 16,000 machines all have identical locks on two 
sensitive mechanisms, which can be opened by any one of 32,000 keys. The security team had no trouble making duplicates 
of the keys at local hardware stores, although that proved unnecessary since one team member picked the lock in 
"approximately 10 seconds."
 
Diebold, the machines' manufacturer, rushed to issue a self-congratulatory press release with the headline "Maryland 
Security Study Validates Diebold Election Systems Equipment for March Primary." The study's authors were shocked to see 
their findings spun so positively. Their report said that if flaws they identified were fixed, the machines could be 
used in Maryland's March 2 primary. But in the long run, they said, an extensive overhaul of the machines and at least 
a limited paper trail are necessary.
 
The Maryland study confirms concerns about electronic voting that are rapidly accumulating from actual elections. In 
Boone County, Ind., last fall, in a particularly colorful example of unreliability, an electronic system initially 
recorded more than 144,000 votes in an election with fewer than 19,000 registered voters, County Clerk Lisa Garofolo 
said. Given the growing body of evidence, it is clear that electronic voting machines cannot be trusted until more 
safeguards are in place.

 Copyright 2004 The New York Times Company 

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