[TriLUG] OT: www.hexblog.com - a fix for the WMF vulernability.

[Rick DeNatale]

On 1/4/06, Tanner Lovelace <clubjuggler at gmail.com> wrote:

> Rick, you mention "programs", but didn't go any further.  Let me elaborate
> on that a bit. :-)
>
> Not only are there "programs" on the Diebold flash cards, but they are
> written in an interpreted language called AccuBasic.  This is a serious
> problem because the Federal Election Commission standard
> specifically stipulates that interpreted code in a voting machine is
> absolutely not allowed.  The interesting thing on this is that these
> machines were FEDERALLY CERTIFIED!  You've got to wonder just
> what that means now that it has been shown that the Dielbold machines
> should have in no way, no how been passed.

Well, they probably got around this because it depends on the meaning
of interpreted.  AccuBasic is compiled in the same sense that Java is
compiled.  I'm not sure that interpretation is really that much less
secure anyway. Sure you can hide stuff in the interpreter, but as Ken
Thompson pointed out in his Turing Award lecture
http://www.acm.org/classics/sep95/ you can hide stuff in the compiler
as well.

And as far as I know, the federal government doesn't actually certify
voting machines, this is done by the state and local governments under
federal guidelines.  The recent lawsuit over the illegal certification
of Diebold DRE machines was against the state of North Carolina.

There's seems to be quite a bit of decertification activity lately,
and some jurisdictions are already looking for new money to buy
replacements for the machines they purchased under the Help America
Vote Act.

And I'm surprised and concerned that the test last month in Leon
county FL, shows that the optical scan machines might not be as good a
solution to verifiable voting as many open voting advocates, including
me, thought they were.

If any of you have seen George Carlin recently, and in particular his
recent "Life is Worth Losing" HBO concert, he opines that democracy is
just an illusion.  I fear that he might have a point.

--
Rick DeNatale

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