Emergency warning to poll workers from cyber scientists on election day

[Amaryllis]

America's Leading Computer Scientists & Cyber Security Experts Issue Emergency Warning to Poll Workers and Americans on Election Day
http://www.opednews.com/articles/genera_press_re_051107_america_s_leading_co.htm

America's Leading Computer Scientists & Cyber Security Experts Issue Emergency Warning to Poll Workers and Americans on

by press release

http://www.opednews.com

The Just Issued Bi-Partisan GAO and Carter-Baker Reports are Correct: Electronic Voting Machines Are Poorly Designed, not Secure and easily Hacked. Your Vote May NOT Be Counted!

Four of America’s Leading Academic Experts in Computer Science and Voting machines offer the following pre-emptive emergency advice.

Background: On October 21, 2005 The Non-Partisan General Accounting Office (GAO) of The United States government issued a strongly worded indictment against electronic voting machines used in the 2004 elections, the same ones that will be used tomorrow in elections in California and around the country.

After an exhaustive study the report states:

“Until these efforts are completed, there is a risk that many state and local jurisdictions will rely on voting systems that were not developed, acquired, tested, operated, or managed in accordance with rigorous security and reliability standards – potentially affecting the reliability of future elections and voter confidence in the accuracy of the vote count.”

http://www.gao.gov/highlights/d05956high.pdf

And, on ____, The Carter-Baker Commission on Federal Election Reform, a bi-partisan effort chaired by President Jimmy Carter and former Secretary of Sate, James Baker, issued its report which similarly found that . . .

“The greater threat to most systems comes not from external hackers but from insiders who have direct access to the machines. Software can be modified maliciously before being installed into individual voting machines. There is no reason to trust insiders in the election industry any more than in other industries such as gambling, where sophisticated insider fraud has occurred despite extraordinary measures to prevent it.”

www.carterbaker.com

EMERGENCY PRESCRIPTIONS FOR A SAFER ELECTION

Dr. Hugh Thompson, Florida Institute of Technology

Direct Cell: 321-795-4531

And, c/o Tom Bain or Davida Dinerman at Schwartz communications
781-684-0770

“1. Tabulators are EASILY hacked, both before and during the election. Votes can be changed in as little as 60 seconds if someone has access to the machine. Therefore NO ONE, OTHER THAN THE POLL WORKERS, SHOULD BE ALLOWED INTO THE ROOM WHERE THE TABULATOR IS LOCATED.

2. PHYSICALLY AND SECURELY TRANSPORT THE DATA from where the votes are cast to where they are counted rather than using a modem. Memory cards should be treated with the same security as a box of ballots or a Brink's truckload of money. (Unlike transporting money there is NO WAY to know the content of the Memory Cards as they leave the polling stations, nor does the person receiving the data know what to expect so any tampering on the way can not , in any way, be detected.).”

Dr. Avi Rubin John Hopkins University

Office Phone [phone]

Cell Phone: [phone]

[email protected]

“Because of the myriad problems possible at every stage of the electronic voting process and the possibility that the software in the tabulator might be faulty or even rigged, it is a good idea to reconcile the precinct counts by hand to check that the numbers that come out of the tabulator, at the end of the process, match the actual precinct totals.



Dr. David Dill, Stanford University

Phone: [phone]

“Law in California and many other states requires that a minimum of 1% of precincts be audited and that more may be. Verification is critical and it is highly recommended that the 1% + audit is conducted on ALL system, including votes by mail.”

Steven Spoonamore, President, Cybrinth, Inc.

Phone: [phone]

“1. Voting Tabulators are where the primary hacks are happening, especially in counties where the Republican is already expected to win.

2. Incidence of hacks increases with the level of GOP partisanship and how much control that partisan GOP has over the voting. Also a high correlation with prominent Christian Right anti-abortion operatives.

3. Watch the suspect counties carefully. Usually they start counting and have some strange malfunction (Power outage, "Humidity Malfunction", Computer Error, Terrorist Threat ect.) They often times need to have a technician "reset" the machines, and whether it is done by a technician or remotely, they need some reason so the tabulator with the force balancer can finish counting much later than other counties, you have big cause to worry. The total number of which is known, then "breaks" in favor of the GOP. ‘Force Balancers’ need to know the total number of votes they have force BEFORE they begin forcing. And only the last county, or couple of counties doing that can do that as they have to know starting ratios and intended finishing ratios.

4. If the Democrat leads across the state, and then suddenly the last counties have huge returns in favor of the Republican, those hard drives should be obtained and searched. Even if they install and erase the code it will still be there until a deep wipe is done.”



Bios:

Dr. Herbert (Hugh) Thompson is Chief Security Strategist at Security Innovation ( www.securityinnovation.com) and is a word-renowned expert on application
security. He has co-authored four books on software security including,
"How to Break Software Security: Effective Techniques for Security Testing"
(Addison Weslwy) and most recently, "The Software Vulnerability Guide"
(Charles River). Herbert is the principal investigator on several US
Government research grants and has been interviewed by top news
organizations including CNN, BusinessWeek, Forbes, Associated Press and
Washington Post. He has delivered award-winning presentations and keynotes
on software security throughout the United States, Europe, and Asia, at
conferences such as STAR, Quality Week, RSA, Gartner, and COMPSEC.



Dr. Thompson has over 60 academic and industrial publications on software security and
frequently writes for industry magazines including CIO Update, Dr. Dobbs
Journal, IEEE Security & Privacy, Journal of Information and Software
Technology, ACM Queue, and Better Software Magazine. Dr. Thompson's primary
responsibilities with Security Innovation include the overall security &
research efforts on all areas of software security. He is also responsible
for training developers and security testers at some of the world's largest
software companies including Microsoft, HP, IBM, Cisco, Symantec and SAIC.
In 2005, Dr. Thompson was chosen a Microsoft Most Valuable Professional in
the field of Development Security. Dr. Thompson earned his PhD in Applied
Mathematics from Florida Institute of Technology, where he remains an
adjunct professor.



Dr. Avi D. Rubin is Professor of Computer Science and Technical
Director of the Information Security Institute at Johns Hopkins
University. Professor Rubin directs the NSF-funded ACCURATE center
for correct, usable, reliable, auditable and transparent elections.
Prior to joining Johns Hopkins, Rubin was a research scientist at
AT&T Labs. He is also a co-founder of Independent Security Evaluators
(securityevaluators.com), a security consulting firm. Rubin is
author of several books including Brave New Ballot (Random House,
2006) Firewalls and Internet Security, second edition (with Bill
Cheswick and Steve Bellovin, Addison Wesley, 2003), White-Hat
Security Arsenal (Addison Wesley, 2001), and Web Security Sourcebook
(with Dan Geer and Marcus Ranum, John Wiley & Sons, 1997). He is
Associate Editor of IEEE Transactions on Software Engineering,
Associate Editor of ACM Transactions on Internet Technology,
Associate Editor of IEEE Security & Privacy, and an Advisory Board
member of Springer's Information Security and Cryptography Book
Series. Rubin serves on the DARPA Information Science and Technology
Study Group. In January, 2004 Baltimore Magazine name Rubin a
Baltimorean of the Year for his work in safeguarding the integrity of
our election process, and he is also the recipient of the 2004
Electronic Frontiers Foundation Pioneer Award. Rubin has a B.S,
('89), M.S.E ('91), and Ph.D. ('94) from the University of Michigan.

[Virginian]

1. Our votes are counted in the precinct.

Nothing and no one leaves the polling place until the votes are counted and a written copy of the results are posted on the front door of the building. The results are both verbally transmitted to the central voting office and electronically transmitted by modem. All three vote counts must match, the votes posted on the door, the votes recorded by human communication and the votes recorded by modem.

[Marie26]

2. Interesting

This one paragraph sounds EXACTLY like what happened in Warren County, OH during the 2004 election. They were the last county to report because of "long lines," they prevented the media or outsiders from entering the vote count because of a "terrorist threat" & it's one of the most Republican counties in Ohio. Hmmm...

"Watch the suspect counties carefully. Usually they start counting and have some strange malfunction (Power outage, "Humidity Malfunction", Computer Error, Terrorist Threat ect.) They often times need to have a technician "reset" the machines, and whether it is done by a technician or remotely, they need some reason so the tabulator with the force balancer can finish counting much later than other counties, you have big cause to worry. The total number of which is known, then "breaks" in favor of the GOP. ‘Force Balancers’ need to know the total number of votes they have force BEFORE they begin forcing. And only the last county, or couple of counties doing that can do that as they have to know starting ratios and intended finishing ratios.