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Vote-Dropping Software Bug Could Gum Up Elections
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Comments (8)
Why is it so difficult to bring a little sanity to this issue? Did you read where elections boards are throwing away their Diebold machines because the software sux? And Diebold changed their name, for perfectly innocent reasons of course.
http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20080819/ap_on_re_us/election_jun...
"One manufacturer offered $1 a piece to take back its ATM-like machines. Some states are offering the devices for sale on eBay and craigslist. Others hope to sell their inventories to Third-World countries or salvage them for scrap."
It's hard to believe anything other than the whole system is hopelessly corrupt and stupid.
It's hard to believe anything other than the whole system is hopelessly corrupt and stupid.
Diebold is to voting machines(*) what Microsoft is to operating systems.
(*)and ATM's. Scary!
(*)and ATM's. Scary!
heh, they've had 30-some years to figure out ATMs. Not sure if they've gotten the hang of them yet. Remember the early 'sploits that were brain-dead simple? Like the kids who discovered you could input a big deposit without actually depositing any money, and then make an immediate withdrawal. Current cracks are more sophisticated, like putting a fake keypad on top of the real one to capture account information and PINs. Or installing completely bogus machines for the same purpose. After you log in they give you an error message, blah blah sorry come back later. Which customers are used to and don't suspect, thanks to Diebold's leetness :).
@tc:
No, they haven't gotten the hang of it. If they had, they wouldn't be running WinCE on them.
(Not sure of Diebold does, but absolutely nobody should be running WinCE, or Windows Anything, where data security is an absolute requirement.)
No, they haven't gotten the hang of it. If they had, they wouldn't be running WinCE on them.
(Not sure of Diebold does, but absolutely nobody should be running WinCE, or Windows Anything, where data security is an absolute requirement.)
Didn't they use to run OS/2 on ATMs?
When did they switch to Wince (I suspect there were some "incentives" involved)?
I talked very briefly this summer to a guy who had one of my bank's ATMs cracked open. At least some ATMs use Windows XP Embedded, and contain what look like consumer-grade PC carcasses in them.
Quoting:It's hard to believe anything other than the whole system is hopelessly corrupt and stupid.
Which is the reason the Netherlands decided at May 18th '08 (recently indeed) to drop e-voting with computers entirely. It became about time. The Dutch government was blackmailed after it almost had to 'open-source' the proprietary source code of the voting computers - which of course was full of bugs. Dutch law demands openness of government, but because of the 'EULA' the Dutch government told its citizens it was not able to give openness about the election software. Apart from the maker of the software saying if they were to open source the code, he would no longer help with the elections. And if that 1 person withdrew his help, elections for 9M people - those allowed to vote - could not go on. Never seen such a good example of vendor lock-in.
Criticisers also managed to rebuild a voting machine to a chess-computer and eavesdrop on it because it emitted electromagnetic waves. Some American voting machines came from the Netherlands as well BTW, the SDU 'other insecure ones'. I have never voted with a red pencil (too young), so next year for EU-elections it's going to be my first time! Only red pencils will be allowed in my country from May 18th '08. Yeah, I love the smell of curtains at elections...
Quoting: When did they switch to Wince (I suspect there were some "incentives" involved)?
After bank-employees found it more easy to work with. Really. It must be true, since I once read it at LXer.
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Also....
ROFL. Now there's some bad server coding....