Most vote machines lose test to hackers

[Newsjock]

Source: San Francisco Chronicle

State-sanctioned teams of computer hackers were able to break through the security of virtually every model of California's voting machines and change results or take control of some of the systems' electronic functions, according to a University of California study released Friday.

The researchers "were able to bypass physical and software security in every machine they tested,'' said Secretary of State Debra Bowen, who authorized the "top to bottom review" of every voting system certified by the state.

Neither Bowen nor the investigators were willing to say exactly how vulnerable California elections are to computer hackers, especially because the team of computer experts from the UC system had top-of-the-line security information plus more time and better access to the voting machines than would-be vote thieves likely would have.

... The review included voting equipment from every company approved for use in the state, including Sequoia, whose systems are used in Alameda, Napa and Santa Clara counties; Hart InterCivic, used in San Mateo and Sonoma Counties; and Diebold, used in Marin County.
Election Systems and Software, which supplied equipment to San Francisco, Contra Costa, Solano and Los Angeles counties in last November's election, missed the deadline for submitting the equipment, Bowen said. While their equipment will be reviewed, Bowen warned that she has "the legal authority to impose any condition'' on its use.

Read more: http://sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2007/07/28/VOTING.TMP&tsp=1

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Front page of Saturday's paper.

[Mojorabbit]

1. Great article. Thanks! eom

[TexasLawyer]

2. Thank God no one would actually hack the vote

Because that would be against the law!:sarcasm:

[Innoma]

3. I don't get it...

In paragraph 1, hackers can break into "virtually every model," and yet the quote says "every machine they tested." Then the next paragraph says that even though hacking into the machines can be done, its unlikely that anyone would be able to do it.

Of course. I'll buy into that. I mean, its not like anyone would give, say, republican operatives the info and tools to do any of that kind of sordid, sneaky stuff, right?

Right....?

[Exultant Democracy]

5. People only cheat in sports and card games, no one would rig an election.

F this I am going to go watch some west wing and pretend I live there for 42 minutes.

[orleans]

4. is this article a LITTLE REMINDER? i mean, we ALREADY KNEW

THESE MACHINES WERE HACKABLE BEFORE THE 2004 ELECTION! right? right?

(i'm not bitching at you, newsjock. i'm just wondering WHY WE HAVEN'T DONE ANYTHING ABOUT THIS YET)

[YvonneCa]

20. This is California...

...finally trying to do something about it. That's why we elected Debra Bowen. She's holding a hearing on Monday in Sacramento. :patriot:




http://www.sos.ca.gov/elections/elections_vsr.htm

[sandnsea]

6. Who would these "vote thieves" be?

14 year olds who got bored looking at internet porn?

Do they really not comprehend who would be stealing these elections? And who they would hire to do the stealing?

Good lord.

[NMDemDist2]

8. this 'punk' is my guess

[YvonneCa]

23. Bowen knows...

...and is holding a hearing. http://www.sos.ca.gov/elections/elections_vsr.htm

[AndyTiedye]

7. I Cannot Advocate Throwing the Machinez into San Francisco Bay Because it Would Pollute the Bay

But surely we shouldn't be voting on those things!

[jeff30997]

9. I would love to see these peoples try to hack...

Paper ballots.

[GreenTea]

10. Who's surprised?

[Kurovski]

11. K&R. (nt)

[diva77]

12. Too bad they didn't try to stage a hcpb hack as well for comparison's sake n/t

[Stevepol]

13. Good article but even this one won't come out and say the machines stink and can't be made secure.

The headline says: MOST VOTE MACHINES LOSE TO HACKERS

as if some of the machines withstood the test.

When in reality, as they go on to say, every damned one of them that was tested failed. The only ones that didn't fail were the ones they weren't permitted to test. Yet the article says the hackers broke thru the security of "virtually every model," as if there were some just too secure to be broken into. People are just in complete denial and can't be brought to the light at the moment. Nobody wants to believe the truth: that we don't have a democracy and won't have one until our vote-counting has some rudimentary level of transparency and verifiability again.

Here's the way the reporter phrases it:

"State-sanctioned teams of computer hackers were able to break through the security of virtually every model of California's voting machines and change results or take control of some of the systems' electronic functions, according to a University of California study released Friday."

But the next paragraph quotes Bowen as saying that the researchers "were able to bypass physical and software security in every machine they tested."

[Jackpine Radical]

16. ES&S--The only machines the hackers couldn't get into...

because there were no ES& S machines in the test.

[Alexander]

34. ES&S was created and owned by Chuck Hagel and his brother...

Chuck Hagel, the Republican Senator from Nebraska who may run for president.

[dbt]

14. DUH.

This just in: sun rises in east. We'll have a special report tonight at 8:00.

[Bitwit1234]

15. We all knew this it is finally finally being brought to light.

And the more we see and find out we know without a doubt that bush stole the 2004 election.

[dkofos]

17. And what will they do about it?? NOTHING

[YvonneCa]

21. Maybe...

...something. http://www.sos.ca.gov/elections/elections_vsr.htm

[leaninglib]

18. A good hacker can hack anything.

[bemildred]

25. And with modest preparation, he can do it fast. nt

[JudyM]

30. Welcome to DU! It'd be great if a hacker could get into the secret WH email system... nt

[Peace Patriot]

19. "the team of computer experts...had top-of-the-line security information...

...plus more time and better access to the voting machines than would-be vote thieves likely would have."

The danger is not "would-be vote thieves" from the outside; the danger is would-be (and did) vote thieves on the INSIDE, who would have the best access, not to mention the best programming tools to use on their own "trade secret" code.

Debra Bowen is one very smart lady. I'd be surprised if she framed it this way. The SF Chronicle is a shit-rag, that colluded on the "swift-boating" of former Sec of State, Kevin Shelley (who had sued Diebold, and demanded to see their source code, six months prior to the 2004 (s)election). So I suspect THEY framed it.

Look at the weasely wording and sentence structure:

"Neither Bowen nor the investigators were willing to say exactly how vulnerable California elections are to computer hackers, especially because the team of computer experts from the UC system had top-of-the-line security information plus more time and better access to the voting machines than would-be vote thieves likely would have."

"...especially because...". Did Bowen say "especially because"?

Let me put this another way. The PURPOSE of Bowen's top-down testing was TO determine "how vulnerable California elections are to computer hackers." So she, no doubt, has a method of assessing that threat, GIVEN the conditions of the testing. What the SF craprag seems to have done is to make their own very unscientific and baseless assessment that voting machines run on "trade secret," proprietary code, owned and controlled by rightwing Bushite corporations, are okay--not to worry, kill your brain, be happy consumers--by TACKING ON the thought that the tests were unfair to the rightwing Bushite corporations, too tough, not realistic, "would be hackers" could never, ever, ever get past that "top-of-the-line" security.

See what I mean? I'd like to know what she really said. Notice there are no quotation marks.

Reading the rest of article bears out my suspicion, but not conclusively. This article goes out of its way to throw cold water on the testing, to make it seem like the machines are really okay, to confuse the issue, and to side with corrupt county officials whose only concern is MONEY--junking billions of dollars in equipment that they were stupid enough, or corrupt enough, to purchase with our tax dollars.

And that is one of the two main points of it all--all the money that has changed hands to destroy our election system--the other point being the advantage of secrecy and the privatization of vote counting to our Corporate Rulers and their bought-and-paid-for county election officials.

God, this matter makes me mad. I am seething. Our democracy lay in ruins--alive only in the hearts of the American people, at this point--and the jerks at the SF Crapicle are STILL covering up the biggest scandal in American history--the fascist coup by which we lost our right to vote!

[YvonneCa]

22. Hearing on Monday...

...in Sacramento. http://www.sos.ca.gov/elections/elections_vsr.htm

[bemildred]

24. Ah, the pretense of security through obscurity.

The fact is all PCs are inherently "hackable" to someone with physical control, and for good reason. You have to go out of your way a good deal to make a PC "un-hackable", and even then with physical control someone can easily undo your work.

[Zorra]

26. But they're going to continue to use these hackable machines

anyway, because there's not enough time before the next election to implement something simple, unhackable, and efficient, like paper ballots?

No sarcasm smilie needed.

[SKKY]

27. Most computers lose the test to hackers...

...this is no surprise. Why would they even consider networking these things? And of course, if you give someone physical access, you're just making their job that much easier.

[Arugula Latte]

28. The 'pukes need to realize THEIR votes can be secretly stolen

A liberal hacker can make an end run around their little election stealing plans. Heck, maybe it has happened already.

[Peace Patriot]

29. There are some who think (and there is evidence for it) that a good many of

the votes that got switched from Kerry to Bush, in 2004, were Republicans who were voting for Kerry. It makes sense, too, that Republican precincts would be the easiest places to steal votes--the places least likely to raise eyebrows with a big Bush vote, and with the types of county election officials least likely to notice or care about anomalies (along with some who would be in on it). I found a weird anomaly in California in Republican counties. Barbara Boxer, running for Senate, took the state by 20%. Kerry took the state by only 10%. This might be explainable in various ways, except that the entire difference between Boxer and Kerry occurred ONLY in the Republican counties! In the Democratic counties, they were about even. How do you figure this--a significant chunk of voters voting for Boxer...and Bush? And ONLY in Republican counties? It makes no sense. Although the exit polls (the real ones) don't support that big of a Kerry/Bush discrepancy in California, I'm still suspicious. And I know that Cliff Arnebeck was convinced that a lot of vote stealing in Ohio was against Republican voters for Kerry.

Would a "liberal" employ this election theft technology against rightwing voters? I think the question needs to be changed. Would a supporter of Mideast war employ this election theft technology--or permit it to be employed on his/her behalf--against an anti-Mideast war candidate? Or, would a bought-and-paid-for Corporatist of either party do so, against a non-Corporatist?

And, sad to say, I think the answer is "yes" to the war and corporate questions, regardless of party. Sometimes I think they have a secret club in some K Street basement, complete with a secret handshake and a secret decoder ring, where the warmongers and the corporatists hang out and worship Kali.

---------

("Help! I need some-body! Help! Not just any-body! Help! You know I need some-one! He-e-e-e-e-e-lp!!!)

[MetaTrope]

31. So the machines are vulnerable to hackers?

Just think how open they are to the programmers that manufactured them?

[camusrebel]

32. Exit polls were never offf by more than 1.5 percent until

when? trivia question(answer at end). Now at the same time they jam this bullshit techno wizardry down our throats, they F with the exit poll, our one sure way to check on results.

Do not let anyone tell you there is no time before the primarys to fix the problem. Donate every last touch screen optical scan card reader dick tracy gizmo to their local schools to run the student council elections. Then, get some bic pens, paper ballots......presto!!! Anyone who suggests anything else punch smack in the face.

Peace Pat..........love the Paul Revere quote!! Was that when he was with the Raiders?

Answer to the trivia question, and i may be a little bit off on particulars but its an interesting topic to research, but exit polls were damn near infallible in accurately predicting outcomes to within 1-2 percent since the widespread use of them started in late 60's. Then out of the blue, in Nebraska, exit polls were way off for the very first time in history. Yes our boy Chuckie Hagel won when the polls said he got his ass kicked. Funniest damned coincidence....Nebraska was piloting a program using them there new fangled "Voting Machines". Well i'll be darned. The kicker, the one that'll make u piss yourself laughin'.................what was chuckie's resume? experience that qualified him to the august heights of United States Senator???? He ran a company that made..........voting machines.

[provis99]

33. How fast did they break in?

Article didn't say, so I'm guessing, oh, say 10 minutes. What a FUBAR these machines are.