Aqui o TSE foge deste tipo de colaboracao, mas nos EUA
o ataque é uma forma de validacao,
http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2005/11/25/BAG13FTR9E1.DTL&hw=Diebold&sn=001&sc=1000
http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2005/11/25/BAG13FTR9E1.DTL&hw=Diebold&sn=001&sc=1000
CALIFORNIA
Hacker to try to attack state voting machines
Friday, November 25, 2005
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A computer hacker will be trying to break into one of
California's electronic voting machines next week, with the full cooperation
of the secretary of state.
Harri Hursti, a computer security expert from Finland,
will be trying to demonstrate that voting machines made by Diebold
Election Systems are vulnerable to attacks by computer hackers seeking to
manipulate the results of an election.
"This is part of our security mission,'' said Nghia Nguyen
Demovic, a spokeswoman for the secretary of state's office. "We want to make
sure that every vote is counted and registered correctly.''
The stakes are high for Diebold, one
of the nation's largest manufacturers of electronic voting systems. The company
is trying to get its new voting system approved for use in California, the
nation's biggest market, but Secretary of State Bruce McPherson refused certification
after 20 percent of the new, printer-equipped voting machines malfunctioned
during a July test in San Joaquin County.
"The secretary said that performance wasn't good enough,''
Demovic said.
The new security test, tentatively scheduled for Wednesday,
will play a role in Diebold's future certification efforts.
Last May, Hursti and another computer security expert
tested a Diebold system for the elections supervisor in
Leon County, Fla. They quickly broke into the system, changed the voting results
and inserted a new program that flashed the message "Are we having fun yet?"
on the computer screens.
"Granted the same access as an employee of our office,
it was possible to enter the computer, alter election results and exit the
system without any physical record of this action,'' said Ion Sancho, the
election supervisor, in a report on the county's Web site.
The California test will use a randomly selected voting
machine from one of the 17 counties that use a Diebold system
-- either touch screen or optical scan machines. The original plan for the
test would have used a machine provided by Diebold, something
opposed by the state and the critics of the company.
"We want to test a machine that's already been used in
a California election,'' said Jim March, an investigator for Black Box Voting,
the consumer group bringing in Hursti for the test. "We want to avoid a so-called
'lab queen,' a voting machine specially rigged for the test.''
Black Box Voting and other groups have complained that
the programs loaded into the Diebold machines can be undetectably
changed to provide a specific election result. Officials of the company argue
their machines provide secure, accurate results.
Officials of the company did not return telephone calls
Wednesday.
Diebold has been a popular target, for
those worried about the security of electronic voting and for Democrats complaining
about the company's links to the Republican Party.
In 2003, the head of Diebold's parent
company, a major backer of President Bush, wrote a fund-raising letter to
Republicans, saying he was "committed to helping Ohio deliver its electoral
votes to the president next year."
The company was trying to sell voting machines in Ohio
at the time and Democrats saw the letter as more than just the usual effort
to raise campaign cash. The complaints grew even louder when Bush edged Democratic
Sen. John Kerry in Ohio in the 2004 election marked by widespread complaints
in that state of alleged voting irregularities.
The company also has a checkered record in California.
Problems with the company's electronic voting system caused disruptions at
180 Alameda County precincts during the March 2004 primary election. During
the October 2003 recall election, several thousand votes for Democratic Lt.
Gov. Cruz Bustamante in Alameda County were somehow electronically transferred
to Southern California Socialist John Burton.
In May 2004, then-Secretary of State Kevin Shelley yanked
certification of the Diebold machines in four counties and
restricted their use in 10 other counties until their security and reliability
could be improved.
The state has mandated that all electronic voting machines
have a paper-ballot backup to record votes by the June 2006 primary.
E-mail John Wildermuth at [EMAIL PROTECTED].
