Thursday, September 29, 2011

The ongoing saga of ridiculously insecure evoting machines

Argonne researchers 'hack' Diebold e-voting system

http://www.computerworld.com/s/article/9220356/Argonne_researchers_hack_Diebold_e_voting_system_

By Jaikumar Vijayan
Computerworld
September 28, 2011

Researchers at the Argonne National Laboratory this week showed how an electronic voting machine model that's expected to be widely used to tally votes in the 2012 elections can be easily hacked using inexpensive,
widely-available electronic components.

Roger Johnston, head of the Vulnerability Assessment Team at the U.S.  Department of Energy's science and engineering reseaech lab, said the hack, which requires about $25 and very little technical expertise, would let
cybercriminals "flip" votes gathered on Diebold Accuvote TS machines and change election results without raising any suspicion.

Johnston and his team have long warned about vulnerabilities in e-voting machines. And two years ago, the team demonstrated how a Sequoia touch screen e-voting machine could be similarly manipulated using ...

It's a bit incredible to me that after all the demonstrations of how easy it has been to hack these machines, the vendors would make a little bit more of an effort to at least avoid outright embarrassment.

Kudos to Argonne researchers for bringing this to our attention!

Tuesday, September 27, 2011

Vroom Vroom

My friend, Dylan (3 yrs old), and his dad joined my family on Saturday for a birthday dinner (for me, I am now 53 years old). Also at the dinner was my good friend and all-around computer know-it-all, Joel (manages my websites, builds php/mySQL apps for me lickety-split and so on. For more info, visit his website). Joel drove up on his motorcyle and walked in with his big helmet and sturdy gloves.

Dylan was immediately entranced by this gear and in just a moment or two had put on the helmet and gloves. Then he asked (of course!) if he could ride on the motorcycle. A few moments later, Joel had hoisted Dylan up on the seat.

And then muffled "vroom, vroom!" noises leaked out from within that big helmet....Dylan was zooming along the highway of his mind!