HEADNOTE: Bloggers, webmasters, patriots, journalists,
believers in the democracy, everybody: This article is the fourth in a
series of remarkable Scoops by Bev Harris about the Diebold FTP files.
So far Bev Harris remains light years ahead of the mainstream
media on this issue. Please post links to this story and to the
Scoop's "A
Very American Coup" page everywhere you can think of. Email
it to your local newspaper editor. Or if you are a journalist - your
boss. This article is free to be reposted in its entirety (including
links) on all non-commercial websites. Commercial websites please
contact the author or publisher.
DIEBOLD DENIES EASE OF VOTING MACHINE TAMPERING -- BUT REBUTTALS
DON'T STAND UP
By Bev Harris *
* Bev Harris is the Author of the soon to be published book
" Black Box Voting: Ballot Tampering In The 21st Century "
Pre order the book at…
http://www.blackboxvoting.com
A Diebold touchscreen voting machine
Makers of the walk right in, sit right down, replace ballot
tallies with your own GEMS vote counting program.
CLICK TO VIEW A VERY AMERICAN COUP
CONTENTS
Earlier Related Stories
1. Synopsis of previous story
2. Diebold denials
3. Diebold denials, debunked
4. Quick Backgrounder about "source code"
**************
EARLIER RELATED ARTICLES ON SCOOP
- Voting
Machines Blasted by Scientists - By Bev Harris
- Johns
Hopkins University Report – HTML Version
- Inside
A U.S. Election Vote Counting Program - Bev Harris
- Sludge
Report #154 – Bigger Than Watergate! (Scoop)
- U.S.
Elections - Anatomy Of An Internet Scoop (Scoop)
- Story
Of The Week: Inside A U.S. Election Program (Scoop)
Diebold's Press Release In Response To Johns Hopkins Report
- Technical
Response To The Johns Hopkins Study – 25 July
**************
1. SYNOPSIS OF THE STORY SO FAR
Diebold voting machines are used in 37 states. Four
computer scientists published a 24-page paper last week, announcing
stunning flaws that appear to make vote-tampering easy.
DIEBOLD REBUTTAL: "We believe that the [voting machine]
software code they evaluated, while sharing similarities to the current
code, is outdated and never was used in an actual election."
"…the study did not use our current software code." http://www.dieboldes.com.
YES, the code examined by the scientists was used in actual
elections. Evidence is provided below, along with questions you can ask
Diebold to clarify their statement.
QUICK RECAP: The first-ever public examination of voting
machine software, obtained when Diebold left it in the open on an
obscure but public web site, revealed stunning flaws. "Our analysis
shows that this voting system is far below even the most minimal
security standards applicable in other contexts." -- Researchers
from Johns Hopkins and Rice Universities, (already tagged as the
"Hopkins Heroes") in paper just released: "Analysis of an
Electronic Voting System" http://avirubin.com/vote.pdf
. Remote access has been left unprotected, encryption keys made
available to hackers, you can vote more than once. There's more: http://www.blackboxvoting.org/access-diebold.htm
-- You can overwrite votes. The system is vulnerable to both inside and
outside attacks. Intruders can change audit logs. You can assign
passwords to all your friends. (A list of links to news articles from
last week is available at: http://www.scoop.co.nz/mason/stories/HL0307/S00219.htm
)
HOW TO STAY AWAY FROM TECHNOBABBLE: For general audiences,
this is a story that might evolve into intimidating bafflegarb, but it
doesn't have to, and here's why: Not everyone understands discussions
about computer languages, but everyone knows what a cover up is. First,
decide whether Diebold gives honest and complete answers.
--------------------------> RETURN TO PAGE
CONTENTS
*************
SEE
SCOOP'S FULL COVERAGE OF:
A VERY AMERICAN COUP
*************
2. DEBUNKING THE DIEBOLD REBUTTALS
Diebold and two state elections officials have come up with nine
rebuttals. Most are posted on the Diebold Election Systems web site http://www.dieboldes.com;
some were statements made to the press last week.
1) The software that's been examined is old and not used in elections
2) The research "overlooked the total system of software,
hardware, services and poll worker training that has been so effective
in real-world implementations." / Used the wrong hardware.
3) Diebold voting software is constantly updated and improved
4) Diebold software undergoes a series of certification processes
5) "We have been using the systems now for a year and a half,
with great success."
6) The touch screens are never connected to the Internet or a public
network, eliminating risk by remote access.
7) "If there is a failure or a compromise of one unit, we go get
everyone and ask them to vote again." (From Maryland official).
8) The system could be manipulated only by someone who brought a
laptop to the voting booth and modified the voting machine. (From a
Georgia official)
9) The Johns Hopkins/Rice University scientists spend too much time
in an ivory tower.
--------------------------> RETURN TO PAGE
CONTENTS
*************
SEE
SCOOP'S FULL COVERAGE OF:
A VERY AMERICAN COUP
*************
3. QUICK DEBUNK:
1) The software that's been examined is old and not used in
elections. Easy to prove:
a) The FEC requires that each software version be certified.
b) The certification number is assigned by the National Association
of State Election Directors (NASED) and is accompanied by a
"version number."
c) Matching version numbers are included in the source code examined
by the Hopkins Heroes.
d) In most states, it is illegal to use a software program that does
not match the certified source code. It is completely improper to have
any extra sets of source code with the same version number but different
code. The NASED-certified versions of the Diebold touch screen program
match the version numbers in the source code. Therefore, the source code
examined by the Hopkins/Rice scientists must be the same as the
certified version used in elections.
e) Questions to ask Diebold: Please identify all versions used in
elections. Were they all certified? Can you fax me that statement? If
this software has changed, how was it changed? Which, if any, of the
flaws noted in the "Analysis of an Electronic Voting System"
report were fixed? How?
f) Basically, Diebold is saying pay no attention to the horrifying
stupidity of the secret source code that was examined, because now they
have new secret source code.
2) The research "overlooked the total system of
software, hardware, services and poll worker training that has been so
effective in real-world implementations." / They ran the tests on
the wrong hardware.
a) These factors are irrelevant to the specified defects in the
implementation code. "Hardware, services and poll worker
training," no matter how good they are, don't fix flawed software
code.
b) The machines might be fun to vote on, but you judge a voting
system's effectiveness by whether it counts votes accurately. Since
there is no underlying paper verification, Diebold can't prove the
systems were accurate.
c) An examination of the "hardware, services and training"
reveals new areas of concern.
[1] Hardware: According to technicians who set up the hardware in
Georgia (see interview: http://www.blackboxvoting.org/robgeorgia.htm)
the touch screens experienced high failure rates, requiring vanloads of
people to drive around the state of Georgia trying to fix all of them in
a hurry. One tech reports "cannibalizing" machines, trying to
find enough working parts to cobble together hardware that actually
worked.
[2] Training: Is this an example? "AccuVote-TS results should be
transmitted to the GEMS host computer either before or after AccuVote-OS
transmission, but not before." (page 356 of the User Manual from
the Pima County upgrade).
[3] Services: Another User Manual invites everyone to download files
from an uprotected ftp site (page 221 of GEMS User Manual)
d) Questions for Diebold: Please address each of the problems noted
in Section 3 of that report and explain how the "total system"
fixes these things.
e) Diebold makes an obtuse, or deliberately misleading, argument when
they say that the researchers, "ran the tests on the wrong
system". The researchers examined the source code. Source code (see
below.) is a set of comands. It is very much like math formulas. Now,
1+1 equals 2, whether you are on a train, in the rain, in a box, or with
a fox. The source code does not suddenly jump up and behave differently
when you switch computers. Computer scientists can analyse how a system
works without ever installing it on a computer, by looking at the source
code commands, and that is what these researchers did.
3) Diebold voting software is constantly updated and improved
a) And that brings us to the programmer comments, which do everything
but ring the liberty bell shouting "Danger! Danger to
Democracy!" Here are excerpts from the programmer comments in the
Diebold source code, examined by Bev Harris:
"Correct heinous logic reversal when recording non-proportional
races." -- "Enter a start condition. This macro really ought
to take a parameter, but we do it the disgusting crufty way forced on us
by the ()-less definition of BEGIN." -- "Fixed problem that
caused an error when view ballot results. -- "Fixed bug in
BallotDLG when ballot with the votes appears after touching Start button
or anywhere else on the screen couple of times." -- "Remove
mmio.c from repoditory [sic] since the code has been moved to the DLL.
Reimplemented MMIO functions, as MS is too effing lazy to provide them
under CE. Most of this is cribbed from the Wine Project."
b) Every time you make changes in a complex system, you introduce new
problems: How many more weaknesses and errors were introduced?
c) This may be redundant...but, you're not supposed to be updating
code without going through certification again.
d) The real point is that there must be a disciplined and managed
engineering process for creating such systems, and that process
(generally called SDLC - Systems Development Life Cycle) must meet
certain standards (IEEE, ISO-9000) for reliability.
e) Flawed processes produce unreliable products.
f) Questions to ask Diebold: Does the current code still exhibit the
defects pointed out by the Hopkins Heroes? How can we know? Who will
show it to us? Since it got by the certifiers the first time, why should
we trust them to check any updated versions? What's in the updated
versions? Have they been tested anywhere? Where? By whom?
g) More questions to ask Diebold: Are these updates intended to bring
the software into better compliance with established regulations? If so,
does this mean that software actually used in elections was in fact not
compliant before the upgrade? Please explain which elections were run on
versions in which these defects had not yet been fixed.
h) More questions for Diebold: Is your changed, updated software
being held in escrow in state offices? Do they still have the older
versions? Who does? How do we know the versions you send in for
certification are the same as those on the machines? The checksum? But
wouldn't that go all woozly after three or four of these unexamined
"patches" you keep slapping on there? (For information about
unexamined patches, go to http://www.blackboxvoting.org/robgeorgia.htm
and http://www.blackboxvoting.com
"topics" "interview with Paul Miller."
4) Diebold software undergoes a series of certification
processes
a) Certification is not relevant to demonstrated code defects.
b) Shall we ignore the fact that the old horrifying code also passed
the 'certification' and the certification is therefore worthless?
c) Until now, the ONE national certifier (because a closer
examination shows that everyone bases their certification on his seal of
approval) has not seen fit to answer any questions and can't be reached
for comment
d) As for the state people actually looking at the source code, Bev
Harris interviewed several and hasn't found a one that does. They do
love to tell you about "logic and accuracy tests" which will
not catch the fraud mechanisms identified by the Hopkins Heroes. The
technician interviewed in Georgia said the L&A tests took about a
minute and a half and consisted of entering "one vote, any vote
would do."
5) "We have been using the systems now for a year and a
half, with great success."
a) Time in the field is not relevant to demonstrated code defects.
b) Define "success."
c) Johnson County, Kansas: When 125 votes showed up in the write-in
column in a single precinct, election workers decided to print each
individual ballot. They found that six races showed discrepancies
between the votes recorded on the touch screen and the votes reported by
the Diebold program on the county computer. CEO Bob Urosevich showed up,
but couldn't explain the error. He said the machines worked splendidly,
they just gave the wrong totals.
d) In Georgia, during the November 2002 election, poll workers were
instructed to turn machines off and on during the election due to a
"buffer problem." This was after at least three sets of
program updates were applied to the machines, due to machine crashes and
other errors occurring on 25 percent of the machines.
6) The touch screens are never connected to the Internet or a
public network, eliminating risk by remote access.
a) The touch screens are enabled for wireless connectivity. They can
communicate with each other at the precinct when the wireless modem card
is in the slot. The county network machine, which also connects to the
Internet, sends ballot information into the touch screen machines. The
touch screens also connect back to the county by modem, to upload
results. The county computer, in turn, is sending its results to a web
server and (optional) also to a wide area network at the state office.
For added fun, a router with a modem bank connects the touch screens
into the county network. There are multiple points during the election
process where remote access is concern of critical importance. b)
Diebold and various other officials are telling whoppers about remote
connectivity, which is without a doubt the most critical security
function of all. For additional public statements made by Diebold about
this, see http://www.blackboxvoting.org/lies.htm.
7) "If there is a failure or a compromise of one unit,
we go get everyone and ask them to vote again." (From Maryland
official David Heller, project manager for Maryland's voting system
implementation). a) Laughable on its face. Can you picture
running around the city of Baltimore looking for 300 voters to get them
to come back and vote again?
b) Question for Mr. Heller: What provision in the law allows voters
to be called back to the polls to "re-cast their votes?"
c) Question for Mr. Heller: When would that check of the touch screen
likely be done? After the polls close. This is not practical in any real
world voting situation. Call voters back and let them re-cast their
ballots? When? The night of the election? The next day?
d) Sounds like complete hooey.
8) The system could be manipulated only by someone who
brought a laptop to the voting booth and modified the voting machine.
(From a Georgia official, Michael Barnes of the Georgia Elections
Division)
a) Two words: Palm Pilot
b) What about an iPaq? Small, powerful, easily concealed.
c) In fact all you need is a forged voter card.
9) "The Johns Hopkins/Rice University scientists spend too much
time in an ivory tower."And further elaboration, by Michael
Jacobsen, spokesman for Diebold: "Electronic election auditing and
security is a very complex and multilayered process, which is not always
well understood by individuals with little to no real-world experience
in developing and implementing such a process."
a) Whew! Let's not worry our pretty little heads about it then, shall
we?
--------------------------> RETURN TO PAGE
CONTENTS
*************
SEE
SCOOP'S FULL COVERAGE OF:
A VERY AMERICAN COUP
*************
4. BACKGROUNDER ON SOURCE CODE FILES
"Source code" contains the commands given to the computer
that tell it how to execute the voting program. Many people are
surprised to learn that source code files consist of English-like
programming commands. Source code is human readable. It is then compiled
to make it machine-readable.
What the Hopkins/Rice scientists examined was the source code
"tree" for the Diebold AccuVote Touch Screen software. The
tree contains the history of the software development process. In the
source code tree you find version numbers, dates, programmer IDs, and
comments that explain changes. Each change is numbered, and can be tied
into the "version number." Therefore, it is easy to see
whether the official NASED-certified version number is the same one as
that contained in the source code examined by the Hopkins Heroes.
Here are excerpts from the source code files studied by the
Hopkins/Rice scientists (Note: According to NASED web site, current
certified version is "v4-3" and a previously certified version
was "v4-0-11"):
# # # # # #
---- > From TransferElecDlg.cpp module downloaded from the FTP
site
v4-3-Simulator:1.20.0.2
v4-1-11-0:1.15.4.1
v4-1-10-0:1.15
vp4-1-4-0:1.18
v4-1-9-0:1.15
v4-2-4-0:1.15
v4-3-1-0:1.18
v4-2-3-0:1.15
vp-4-1-3-0:1.18
v4-1-8-0:1.15
v4-2-2-0:1.15
v4-2-1-0:1.15
1.20
date 2002.03.05.21.26.51; author tri; state Exp;
branches;
next 1.18;
log
@Fix problem with print VCenter KeyId rather than VCenter Id on label
after download.
1.19
date 2002.02.26.03.00.23; author whitman; state Exp;
branches;
next 1.18;
1.19
log
@Update copyright notice from "Global Election Systems,
Inc." to "Diebold Election Systems, Inc."
1.18
date 2002.01.26.04.57.55; author tri; state Exp;
branches;
next 1.17;
1.18
log
@Changed raw throw to THROW with a message.
1.17
date 2002.01.24.21.17.57; author dmitry; state Exp;
branches;
next 1.16;
1.17
log
@More work on getting download compatible with GEMS's protocol version
5 and higher.
1.16
date 2002.01.24.02.37.02; author dmitry; state Exp;
branches;
next 1.15;
1.16
log
@Make download compatible with GEMS's download protocol greater then
DL2DOWNLOAD_MIN.
1.15
date 2001.10.16.23.30.14; author tri; state Exp;
1.15
log
@Fix problem with virtual memory not being released. Also some clean
up in download.
# # # # # #
Below these headers in the source code, you find the actual commands
that tell the computer what to do. Therefore, if you know that
"version 4.0.11" was certified by NASED, you can trace it
directly back to the source code that says "Version 4.0.11."
There are protocols for writing source code which require the above
process and, according to Diebold sales literature for its voting
machines, it claims to follow those protocols. (Georgia presentation,
Power Point file, found on Diebold ftp site).
In most states, it is illegal to use a software program that does not
match the certified source code. Therefore, the source code examined by
the Hopkins/Rice scientists must be the same as the certified version
used in elections.
--------------------------> RETURN TO PAGE
CONTENTS
*************
SEE
SCOOP'S FULL COVERAGE OF:
A VERY AMERICAN COUP
*************
QUICK UPDATE: Pima County, Arizona, July 27 2003: The chairman
of the Pima County Democratic Party in Tucson, Arizona says that, if
necessary, they are prepared to take legal action to prevent the use of
Diebold software in upcoming city primary elections, and to enjoin its
use until it can be proven secure and accurate. (Contact: Paul
Eckerstrom (520) 326-3716 or Gordon Mustain (520) 325-5607)
http://www.scoop.co.nz/mason/stories/WO0307/S00330.htm
*****ENDS*****
FOOTNOTE (repeats headnote): Bloggers, webmasters,
patriots, journalists, believers in the democracy, everybody: This
article is the fourth in a series of remarkable Scoops by Bev Harris
about the Diebold FTP files. So far Bev Harris remains light years ahead
of the mainstream
media on this issue. Please post links to this story and to the
Scoop's "A
Very American Coup" page everywhere you can think of. Email
it to your local newspaper editor. Or if you are a journalist - your
boss. This article is free to be reposted in its entirety (including
links) on all non-commercial websites. Commercial websites please
contact the author or publisher.
