http://www.freedom-to-tinker.com/?p=1083
By Ed Felten
November 2, 2006
[The following statement (PDF version with contact info [1]) was
released today by me and the Election Science Institute. [2] ]
The memory cards that will be used to store votes on Election Day in
Cuyahoga County, Ohio were stuck into ordinary laptop computers in
September, possibly exposing the countys election system to a virus
infection. This serious security lapse was caught on video through the
efforts of Cleveland resident Adele Eisner and Cleveland-area filmmaker
Jeffrey Kirkby, who has graciously made his raw footage available on the
Internet for personal viewing at
http://homepage.mac.com/captainkirkby/Data_Crunch/iMovieTheater87.html
Just one month ago a Princeton evoting study (available at
http://itpolicy.princeton.edu/voting) showed that the memory cards used
in Diebold touchscreen voting systems could carry computer viruses that
would infect voting machines and steal votes on the infected machines.
"Diebold has repeatedly stated that this type of security breach is
virtually impossible due to security practices employed by the vendor
and election officials," said Edward Felten, Professor of Computer
Science and Public Affairs at Princeton University. "Anyone who watches
the video can now see for themselves that a virus could penetrate the
election system via tasks performed by election staff."
The new video shows a group of election workers sitting at tables, each
with a laptop computer. An official explains that these laptops were
gathered from around the office, and some are the personal laptops of
election workers. Each worker has a laptop and a stack of memory cards,
and is inserting the memory cards one by one into the laptop. Cuyahoga
County officials claim that every one of the countys memory cards gets
this treatment, in order to archive vote records from the May 2006
primary election onto CD-ROMs.
Ordinary laptops are of course vulnerable to computer viruses and other
malicious software. Given the number of ordinary laptops in the room, it
is reasonably likely that at least one is infected with spyware, a
virus, or other malware. This puts at risk the memory cards, and the
votes they will record from next weeks election.
Given the vulnerability of touch screen voting systems, election
procedures must be stringent and consistently followed. Safe procedures
call for memory cards to be inserted only into computers that are
carefully secured and never connected to the Internet. Using ordinary
laptop computers, borrowed from offices and homes, to process memory
cards is dangerous. The video shows that this practice is not the
isolated act of a few election workers, but an official plan put in
place by election officials.
"Not only does this video demonstrate how potential security threats can
be realized, this is yet another illustration of how election officials
are forced to develop their own processes and procedures in order to
operate their new election systems," said Steven Hertzberg, Project
Director at Election Science Institute. "Often we find that critical
procedures and essential tools were not developed or deployed with this
new election system, leaving election officials to fend for themselves.
Diebold should have provided an archiving system as part of their
delivery to jurisdictions, before this system went live nationally."
Voting machine vendors and election officials often argue that rigorous
procedures can compensate for the technical weaknesses of voting
machines. Some jurisdictions implement such procedures well, but many do
not. Talking about procedural controls is easy. Putting them into
practice is much harder.
"I first raised concerns to the Cuyahoga County Board of Election in
mid-Summer, after Secretary of State Blackwell released an advisory
about transferring electronic election data to CD ROM. After I witnessed
the transfer, I raised concerns a potential security breach to Cuyahoga
Board of Elections Chairman Bennett and the rest of the board on October
2nd," said Adele Eisner. "Unfortunately, the board simply defended its
dangerous practice."
[1] http://www.freedom-to-tinker.com/doc/2006/cuyahoga_statement.pdf
[2] http://www.electionscience.org/
Received on Fri Nov 3 00:33:15 2006