

Voting machine source-code leak shows odd subroutines - jv2222
http://www.boingboing.net/2009/10/20/voting-machine-sourc.html

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eli
I agree wholeheartedly that all voting machine code should be open for public
inspection, but I don't think it helps the cause to make fantastic claims that
are not supported by the evidence.

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rbanffy
I have worked in the software for the Brazilian electronic voting system and I
am astonished they used such a heavy pile of software.

The code I helped write had to run on as little as 8 megabytes of RAM on an
embedded MS-DOS-like OS (our version targeted Windows CE, but it had to run on
the older, 386-ish machines). It was written in very compact ANSI C, had data
in plain-text files and certainly didn't need a relational database embedded
in the ballot.

All this reeks of incompetence.

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iuybuyvvyu
Yes but with that sort of primitive technology you have to wait until AFTER
the election to know who won!

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StrawberryFrog
I never saw the rush. You USA'ians vote on 4 November, and Inauguration is not
until January 20. Can't you afford to spend a day or two on getting the
results right rather than fast?

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pasbesoin
I think the grandparent comment was meant humorously.

Akin to how in Chicago we say, "Vote early, and vote often!"

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StrawberryFrog
It was. But even with "waiting until after the election to know who won" you
want to know who won by breakfast the next day. Would anything actually go
wrong if you waited a day or three?

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jacquesm
What is surprising is that people will jump the gun with stuff like this, if
you _really_ want to make a dent in these companies you have to get ironclad
proof first, have it checked by someone else that is 'noteworthy' under NDA
and _then_ you go all out to the media.

It's almost as if they just cared about the short term exposure and not the
longer term goal.

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nl
Claim: "They appear instead to have just vandalized the data as valid
databases by stripping the MS-SQL header data off, assuming that would stop us
cold."

Correction: " It appears the files were NOT VANDALIZED and will open in MS-SQL
Server 2005."

Claim: "This in turn revealed thousands of lines of Microsoft SQL code that
appear to control the logical flow of the election. Stuff like:" (example
follows)

The example they give looks like some code which adds a new candidate to the
ballot.

This looks like an embarrassing debacle so far.

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Zak
Hyperbole aside, it _does_ appear that Sequoia is violating the laws regarding
security in such a system. This is executable code which could impact the
results of an election which is machine-generated, interpreted, dynamically
loaded not integrity-checked. All these characteristics go against federal
recommendations for the design of computerized voting machines and constitute
cause for concern.

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nl
Actually, that "law" is a "Voluntary Voting System Guide".

I can't download that guide at the moment, but the part quoted says:

"Self-modifying, dynamically loaded, or interpreted code is prohibited, except
under the security provisions outlined in section 6.4.e [sic - see note
below]. This prohibition is to ensure that the software tested and approved
during the qualification process remains unchanged and retains its integrity.
External modification of code during execution shall be prohibited. Where the
development environment (programming language and development tools) includes
the following features, the software shall provide controls to prevent
accidental or deliberate attempts to replace executable code"

and

6.4.e: "After initiation of election day testing, no source code or compilers
or assemblers shall be resident or accessible."

I think that most readings of that would interpret it to mean that SQL
statements to create tables would be permitted, but that the interfaces to the
databases should be secured.

The whole thing is a beat-up.

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jacquesm
For now it seems that it doesn't, there is already much written about this and
there are plausible explanations on how that stuff got in there. Best to wait
and see and not jump the gun on this, if it is real it will definitely come
out. Until then this is pure speculation.

Such accusations should only be made with very solid evidence in hand to avoid
blowing the media attention on a 'dud', then next time when there is real
evidence you'll get a small fraction of the response.

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nl
<http://www.itwire.com/content/view/28715/1141/> is a rebuttal by someone with
some actual technical skill (eg, he knew how to restore a database backup)

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eli
Nope. It does not show that.

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Devilboy
Whenever a news article ends in a question mark, the answer is usually 'NO'.

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TrevorJ
The entire idea of electronic voting just rubs me the wrong way. Any way you
shake it, it seems as if the security of the systems is only as good as the
lowest-payed employee with access to the source code.

