"As for vote switching, not sure how many times I have to tell you, the election goes thru a logic and accuracy test that proves the votes are counted correctly. There is no vote switching ... on ES&S machines. Not sure where you get this information. You shouldn't believe everything you hear." 

Malware can easily defeat pre-election testing and certification processes: logic and accuracy tests cannot "prove" that software is free of malicious code.  Assertions that no vote switching has ever been shown to have occurred on an ES&S system or any other computerized voting system is explained by the fact that malware (malicious software code) can be self-erasing.   

A few hours later, the same software advocate said: 

"I was a programmer for over 40 years. But lets take it a step further. What if the hacking is done in the module that does the election reporting and not the machines or media? How can we ever trust anything that the computer does? My answer is that so far, the ES&S machines have not been hacked and the state does extensive testing, so how did this hacking get by them? You keep harping on human hand counts, I trust the machines much more than the humans. Machines don't care who wins, they do as they are told. And as our testing shows, they have been doing exactly that."

1. "[E]xperience in testing software and systems has shown that testing to high degrees of security and reliability is from a practical perspective not possible."  

-- National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST). Requiring Software Independence in Voluntary Voting Systems Guidelines 2007: Security and Transparency Subcommittee Recommendations for the Technical Guidelines Development Committee. November, 2006.  

2.  In Dec. 2007 Ohio tested ES&S, Hart and Diebold.  "All of the studied systems possess critical security failures that render their technical controls insufficient to guarantee a trustworthy election."   

-- Ohio Secretary of State, Project EVEREST Report of Findings, December 14, 2007  

3. "[T]he growing use of information technology in elections ... provides the opportunity for new kinds of attacks, from new kinds of attackers."

And, later, "New and more ingenious kinds of malware are constantly being invented and used. There are now tens of thousands of known viruses, and the sophistication of tools used to develop and use new ones has increased. 

"Malware in a voting system could be designed to operate in very subtle ways, for example, dropping or changing votes in a seemingly random way to make detection more difficult. Malware can also be designed to be adaptive - changing what it does depending on the direction of the tally. It could also potentially be inserted at any of a number of different stages in the development and implementation process - from the precinct all the way back to initial manufacture - and lie in wait for the appropriate moment." 

-- Fischer, Eric A. CRS Report for Congress: Election Reform and Electronic Voting Systems (DREs): Analysis of Security Issues. Congressional Research Service, November 4, 2003.    

4.  "This is a classic computer security problem. Whoever gets into the machine first wins. So if the Trojan horse software is in there first, you ask it to test itself -- it will always lie to you and tell you everything is fine. And no matter what testing code you try to add after the fact, it's too late. It can now create a world where the testing software can't tell that the machine has been compromised, even though it has...." 

-- Dan Wallach, Rice University computer security expert has examined electronic voting systems since 2001, and has testified about voting security issues before government bodies in the U.S., Mexico, and the European Union. Quote from Peering through the chinks in the armor of high-tech elections, May 27, 2007  

5. "An attack could plausibly be accomplished by a single skilled individual with temporary access to a single voting machine.  The damage could be extensive – malicious code could spread to every voting machine in polling places and to county election servers." 

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Brent Turner Good work Rady-   Thanks for recycling this-  It can't be stated enough-   We need to get rid of the secret code in our election systems-  We are demonstrating open source code / paper ballot systems at LinuxWorld in SF August 5th- 7th -  This is changing the face of US elections-  We must break down the cartel of secretive vendors and get the public involved in oversight-  Brent  by Brent Turner (1 articles, 0 quicklinks, 0 diaries, 94 comments) on Saturday, Jul 19, 2008 at 5:18:31 PM   (0+)

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GitarChris This is Required Reading This material should be required reading for every full time election worker.  Can you explain why the media totally ignores computers in voting?  They are too cozy with incumbants, I suppose. by GitarChris (0 articles, 0 quicklinks, 0 diaries, 142 comments) on Friday, Jul 25, 2008 at 4:05:49 PM   (0+)

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Rady Ananda Reply: email your elections chief; local newspapers Thanks for your comment, Gitar Chris ~ let's move the public, too. And here's the creme de la creme, most succinct, in-plain-English best quotes by computer security experts: Warning: This Product Is Hazardous To Your Freedom at http://snipurl.com/31v1x Vendors can keep their software; we don't want it.  It’s undetectably mutable. Fuggetaboutit.  Keep the lever voting machine, or hand count the ballots. Software is simply too fragile for an authentic democracy. by Rady Ananda (182 articles, 374 quicklinks, 49 diaries, 1718 comments [201 recommended, 2 rejected]) on Friday, Jul 25, 2008 at 4:17:17 PM   (0+)

 
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