Balt Sun re BBV: Kids break in to memory cards/dial in/can change vote
Picking the locks protecting the internal printers and memory cards, voting more than once, launched a dial-up attack to get into Board of Elections software, where, once inside, he could easily change vote totals that come in on Election Day.
Does anyone wonder why the GOP controlled voting machines manufacturers can promise to deliver a state like Ohio to Bush - and not have the media discussing that promise?
Now who let these kids play detective - and who let the Baltimore Sun report this on 1/30/04? Let me see, today is Feb 1 - 2 days later - and this has not made broadcast news - wonder why?
http://www.sunspot.net/news/local/bal-te.md.machine30jan30,0,4050694.s... Md. computer testers cast a vote: Election boxes easy to mess with
In Annapolis, tales of trickery, vote rigging
By Stephanie Desmon
Sun Staff
Originally published January 30, 2004
For a week, the computer whizzes laid abuse - both high- and low-tech - on the six new briefcase-sized electronic voting machines sent over by the state.
One guy picked the locks protecting the internal printers and memory cards. Another figured out how to vote more than once - and get away with it. Still another launched a dial-up attack, using his modem to slither through an electronic hole in the State Board of Elections software. Once inside, he could easily change vote totals that come in on Election Day.<snip>
He is now a director at RABA Technologies in Columbia, the firm that the state hired for about $75,000 to look at Maryland's new touch-screen voting machines scheduled to be unveiled in nearly every precinct in Maryland for the March 2 primary.<snip>
Wertheimer said he thinks there will be a need for some type of paper receipt, what some call a voter-verified paper trail - basically a printout of each vote as it is cast for the voter to check before leaving the polling place. Without a paper ballot, many say, a proper recount is impossible.<snip>
Mark McLarnon had something up his sleeve as he approached one of the voting machines. A close look revealed the cord of a portable keyboard. He had learned that he could quickly pick a lock on the side of the machine, plug in his keyboard and wreak havoc on the results stored inside - all while likely going undetected by poll judges.<snip>
Someone bent on causing trouble could call a polling place and tell workers that the state's modem is down and results should be called in on a new phone number. Then the troublemaker could simply change the results before sending them onto the state.
While results can now be encrypted - after criticism that they weren't being - something called authentication is missing. Authentication tells the main computer that the person sending in results is the one who is actually permitted to do so.
Meanwhile, William A. Arbaugh, an assistant computer science professor at the University of Maryland, College Park and part of the team, easily sneaked his way into the state's computers by way of his modem. Once in, he had access to change votes from actual precincts - because he knew how to exploit holes in the Microsoft software.<snip>
The Baltimore Sun
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