November 28, 2005

"California may impose hacker test on all electronic vote machines"

"Companies wanting to sell electronic voting machines in California may be forced to prove their systems can withstand an attack from a computer hacker, the state's top elections official said Monday.

Secretary of State Bruce McPherson said his office is planning a hacker test on a machine built by Diebold Election Systems, one of the nation's largest manufacturers of electronic voting systems. McPherson said he might seek to expand such testing to all systems seeking certification for use in California's 58 counties.

"It's all about giving the voters trust in the system," McPherson told reporters after giving opening remarks at a conference focused on testing and certification of electronic voting machines.

Several media outlets had reported that the Diebold hacker test was scheduled for Wednesday, but McPherson said the details of the arrangement are still being worked out. He said he expected the Diebold test to be performed sometime before the end of the year.

Diebold has been criticized by some activist groups as being vulnerable to outside hackers seeking to manipulate election results.

The secretary of state's office has asked Finnish security expert Harri Hursti to come to California and conduct the Diebold hacker test, said Nghia Nguyen Demovic, a spokeswoman for McPherson.

"He's been invited and we're in talks with him," Demovic said.

She said the contact was made by David Jefferson, a scientist at Lawrence Livermore Laboratory who chairs a committee for McPherson that is investigating the electronic voting machines.

The tests will use a randomly selected voting machine from one of the 17 counties that currently use a Diebold system."

The article is here.

Posted by Randy Riddle at November 28, 2005 08:23 PM