Professors Show How to Hack a Diebold (Ivy League Edition)

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How to Hack a Diebold (Ivy League Edition)
by Marty Kaplan
09.14.2006

Princeton computer scientists have figured out how to hack into a Diebold AccuVote [sic] TouchScreen voting machine. The subversion of democracy takes a coupla minutes, a screwdriver or paperclip, plus a floppy with the malware they've written.

This is no comedy video; it's a bone-chilling, blood-pressure-raising, citizen-outraging rebuttal to all the calming unctuous bromides you've heard about the safety of our voting technology.

The authors of this paper may be geeks, but they don't wear tinfoil hats. The P doesn't stand for Paranoia; it stands for Princeton.

I'd upload the Princeton video so you could watch it right here, but the Creative Commons non-commercial license it's copyrighted under precludes wrapping it in an ad. As long as you attribute it and don't profit from it, you can post the video on any site you'd like.

If the hotlink to the video doesn't work for you, here's the URL: http://itpolicy.princeton.edu/voting/videos.html

The complete paper can be found here: http://itpolicy.princeton.edu/voting/

Had enough?

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Problems Found in Ohio Computer Voting

Quote:

All Things Considered, September 13, 2006 · A report finds several bugs in the new voting system in Cuyahoga County, Ohio. The report says that poll workers were poorly trained in monitoring the new touch-screen voting machines, and there were discrepancies between the new paper-ballot backups and the votes recorded by the machines.

In the first thorough study of a paper-backed system -- often seen as an answer to concerns about touch-screen voting -- the nonpartisan Election Science Intistute found that about 10 percent of the paper ballots sampled were uncountable. And in Ohio, that's a big problem: The paper ballot is the official ballot if there's a recount.

...

"If you lost the ballots, you lost it for good," Vu says. "There's no way of retrieving those votes. Here in this new environment, you have a backup and redundancy method."

And, he says, in the event of a recount, the county can always recreate the paper trail using the electronically stored results.

...

I'm not sure this guy gets it....

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"The subversion of democracy takes a coupla minutes, a screwdriver or paperclip, plus a floppy with the malware they've written. "

So wait, all I have to do is go into the local Town Hall on election day, armed with a SCREWDRIVER or PAPERCLIP AND THEIR FLOPPY??? Rolling Eyes

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Folks have access to the machines prior to election day, too.

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Quote:

"The subversion of democracy takes a coupla minutes, a screwdriver or paperclip, plus a floppy with the malware they've written. "

So wait, all I have to do is go into the local Town Hall on election day, armed with a SCREWDRIVER or PAPERCLIP AND THEIR FLOPPY??? Rolling Eyes Rolling Eyes Rolling Eyes Rolling Eyes

Yes, that's all that you have to do to change hundreds, if not thousands, of votes. It could be a poll worker, or even someone who just steps into the booth to vote.

Cycloptichorn

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Professors Show How to Hack a Diebold (Ivy League Edition)

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