December 01, 2005

"A hacker's touch"

From a SF Chronicle editorial:

"California voting officials are facing a federal mandate to modernize elections. Make it faster, more accurate and easier for the disabled and others.

But there's a hidden problem: A new wave of machines and the software that runs them may not be secure or reliable.

Secretary of State Bruce McPherson, the state's top elections official, is right to use caution in approving a request by Diebold, a major vote-machine maker, to sell its products in California.

McPherson's staff has already done extensive tire-kicking. It's put the Diebold hardware through a second test after an initial dry-run showed problems such as frozen screens and paper jams that block a record of a voter's choices.

Now McPherson's taking testing to new heights. He's bringing in a Finnish hacker, whose specialty is voting machines, to see if the Diebold product is tamperproof. The same tester was able to break into another Diebold product in Florida."

Posted by Randy Riddle at December 1, 2005 07:11 AM