On Wednesday, the Center For Information Technology Policy at Princeton University released a report that proves that the Diebold Accuvote-TS voting machines can be easily infected with an untraceable malicious virus that steals votes and gives a result different than the true vote tally:
This paper presents a fully independent security study of a Diebold AccuVote-TS voting machine, including its hardware and software. We obtained the machine from a private party. Analysis of the machine, in light of real election procedures, shows that it is vulnerable to extremely serious attacks. For example, an attacker who gets physical access to a machine or its removable memory card for as little as one minute could install malicious code; malicious code on a machine could steal votes undetectably, modifying all records, logs, and counters to be consistent with the fraudulent vote count it creates. An attacker could also create malicious code that spreads automatically and silently from machine to machine during normal election activities — a voting-machine virus.
UPDATE: The video that accompanies the study is below:
I contacted Chuck Hahn, Assistant Secretary of State Policy & Planning to get Secretary of State Bruce McPherson's response to this latest indictment of the very technology that he himself certified for use in California's elections. Remember that McPherson certified Diebold even after a study that his very own office conducted found "serious flaws" in the Diebold software. His certification was "conditional" apparently on their insistence that they would fix the vulnerabilities.
At the CA GOP summer convention, I asked McPherson directly what reassurances Diebold had given him that these flaws would be fixed. He simply said "I wouldn't have certified them if I didn't think they were secure." And when I asked if there's anything online or in the public record that can reassure voters of Diebold's good faith efforts, he told me that they held public hearings that anyone could attend. That's when Hahn stepped in, gave me his card and asked me to give him a call and he swept McPherson away.
So in the wake of this new revelation I did call him and e-mailed him to make sure they were aware of the report and to get the Secretary's response. I received a return e-mail from Hahn not long after that, which, while swift, was still quite dismissive UPDATE:he prefers not to be on the record so I've taken down the text of the e-mail. He's been helpful and responsive so far. Hopefully we'll get a swift response from McPherson soon. This is about keeping pressure on him to answer for his decision to re-certify these machines. As I say in the comments, it appears from his certification announcement that CA may not even be using the machine tested. But that's not the end of the story, nor is it the end of the explaining we must demand from McPherson.
