Diebold Brushes Off Yet Another Damning Security Report

from the accountability? dept

Just a day after Avi Rubin discussed many of the real world problems of some Diebold e-voting machines in action, Ed Felten has come out with his quite damning independent review of the machines -- noting just how problematic the security is and how easy it was to upload malicious programs (including a virus that could spread dangerous software from machine to machine). This is hardly the first time we've seen such a report, but it seems like each report is progressively worse. By this point, you'd have to have lived in a hole to believe e-voting machines are secure. Diebold, in typical fashion, has responded not by admitting to any problems, but by attacking Felten's report -- claiming that his test (done on a machine acquired just a few months ago) was based on older software. Still, given the sheer number of reports of security problems with Diebold machines over the years, it's quite difficult to believe that between a couple months ago and now, they've solved all the security issues. In fact, given Rubin's report from yesterday -- it sounds like their "security measures" are so weak as to be a joke. What's most amazing of all is that Diebold continues to act defiantly about this, despite overwhelming proof that their machines have tremendous fundamental problems. Given the importance of secure and accurate elections, Diebold's continued denial of problems and attitude that there's no problem at all should concern just about everyone. Yet, it seems like they're being used almost everywhere.