I just watched a show on the History Channel about a Computer guy

[KaliTracy]

named Ron Harris who was working for the Gaming Board - and after a series of events which would have put a company to trial (Key witness was killed) Company never went to trial and this kind of bent him a bit -- he went to the "dark side" and created his own way to scam the machines...

What I was interested in was the Coin Combination he programmed into some slots -- (this was in the early 90s). By inserting a certain coin combination such as 3 then 2 then 4 then 1 (Made that up, but you get the picture) -- there was finally a large payoff.

He was able to make this work by putting a gaff into code that wasn't corrupted when the officials were checking the code in the machine.

1. he created a program to check the machine code with the master code (that was his job)
2. he put the rogue code into his program
3. the gaming officials would go to check random machines, they'd take a chip out of working machine, put it on the machine to "check it" to the original master code (which Harris had manipulated).
4. when they put the chip back into the machine, it had the gaff attached.
5. an accomplice would later play the combination.


His original job was to check working machine code to the certified Master code from each machine maker. That's what first sparked my interest -- If they do this for Gaming machines -- why couldn't they do this check (not the scam, but the check!) to the paperless e-voting machines?

If anything was "proprietary" I would assume it to be code written for various gambling machines.

I just thought this little hour show was interesting, and it awakened a few more questions in me. Mainly, why is this electronic voting code so secret?

The only reason I can see it not being checked against the "certified" code is because the State Departments or BOEs don't have a certified copy on-hand -- the company does, and that does us no good. Otherwise, why couldn't they just compare the two (besides man hours.... but I would think this would be worth it).

Thoughts?




********
for the curious

He was sentenced to 7 years, got out after 2 or so and is supposedly in the Publication business in Vegas, blacklisted from any casino.

Couple of Articles on a quick Google...

The World's Greatest Slot Cheat?
http://www.americancasinoguide.com/Tips/slot-cheat.shtml

Former gaming official sent to jail for slot scam
http://www.reviewjournal.com/lvrj_home/1998/Jan-10-Sat-1998/news/6745681.html

[Wilms]

1. Do I have this right?

The program used to check a machine infects the machine with malicious code. Is that it??

[KaliTracy]

2. yeah -- that's what he ended up doing. it infected it when it checked it

SOOOO -- couldn't it Uninfect it if someone ran the "cleaning" check on it?

:tinfoilhat:

[Wilms]

3. .

:wow: :argh:

[farmbo]

5. This would explain why Triad (Ohio tabulators) had to "check" their...

...machines AFTER the election, but before the recount.

[KaliTracy]

6. The show didn't talk about the differences between EPROMs and regular

chips -- so don't know if the Triad and/or diebold machines used these (though from what I've read they were using technology at least this old in some cases).

The original case he was on (when he was still "legit") had to do with a poker machine that "flipped" at the last minute and never payed out on Royal flushes and other high hands. The machines were from American Coin. Harris put an extraordinary amount of time trying to crack the code -- and did find the rouge code.

So that code was in the machine -- no "changes" necessary to make it do what it did -- just random machines that were deployed with it.

I guess when I saw all of this, I just wondered if any parts/pieces could apply to the tabulators and electronic voting machines. Unless the chips were EPROMs I doubt that Triad or Diebold (or others) could do anything to the original chip (though, changing out a chip.... could have occurred).

I am reminded just now as I typed that of a RailRoad company getting into big trouble for switching out the electronic parts of a faulty railroad signal. "Someone" went after hours to do this -- no one fessed up (that I know), but the company got in trouble. The way they caught this was through identification/serial numbers on the new pieces compared to the old ones.

I'm sure though, that out SOS and BOEs (or whoever does the certifying) never thought to certify and log the actual motherboard pieces and parts and their respective serial numbers....

[KaliTracy]

4. actually -- it just infected the CHIP -- they took out the chip from the

working machine -- put it on the "code checking" machine -- and when it was checking the code, the rouge code was going onto the original chip (that is then reinstalled in the slot machine).

[Bill Bored]

7. Ensign and Reid are both from NV. This is why they want VVPBs I think.

I was told by Hedda Foil that Ensign lost an election to Reid and could not get a recount as there was no paper.

Of course, you still need those random audits, but at least with the VVPB, if you're willing to pay for a recount, you can get one.