Diebold Voting Machines Can Be Hacked With Virus

The Source Code Review sections of CA SoS Debra Bowen's independent "Top-to-Bottom Review" of voting machines were released yesterday after being scrubbed of some of the more dangerous, specific "road-maps" for hackers.

As expected, the reports are exceedingly troubling and damaging to the entire failed e-voting industry and Diebold, once again, is shown for the menace to democracy that its once-good name has now come to signify.

As reported by PCWorld...

Diebold Election Systems Inc. voting machines are not secure enough to guarantee a trustworthy election, and an attacker with access to a single machine could disrupt or change the outcome of an election using viruses, according to a review of Diebold's source code.

"The software contains serious design flaws that have led directly to specific vulnerabilities that attackers could exploit to affect election outcomes," read the University of California at Berkeley report, commissioned by the California Secretary of State as part of a two-month "top-to-bottom" review of electronic voting systems certified for use in California.

Advertisement - scroll to continue reading

Are you getting our free newsletter?

Subscribe to Scoop’s 'The Catch Up' our free weekly newsletter sent to your inbox every Monday with stories from across our network.
Email Address *

The assessment of Diebold's source code revealed an attacker needs only limited access to compromise an election.

"An attack could plausibly be accomplished by a single skilled individual with temporary access to a single voting machine. The damage could be extensive --- malicious code could spread to every voting machine in polling places and to county election servers," it said.

"A virus could allow an attacker who only had access to a few machines or memory cards, or possibly to only one, to spread malicious software to most, if not all, of a county's voting machines," the report said.

Voting machine "sleepovers," anyone? (Yes, we're talking to you Mikel Haas, Deborah Seiler, and Michael Vu in San Diego!)

And finally, there's this --- bolding added so it can be seen easier by members of CONGRESS...

The report warned that a paper trail of votes cast is not sufficient to guarantee the integrity of an election using the machines.

Got that, Mr. Holt and Ms. Feinstein?

And with that, we eagerly await Bowen's fateful decisions, due today, on what to do with California's electronic voting systems. She may choose to do a) nothing, b) decertify, or c) recertify with new conditional security elements. Today is Judgement Day. Stay tuned...

© Scoop Media