bugtraq - Re: Diebold Global Election Management System (GEMS) Backdoor Account Allows Authenticated Users to Modify Votes

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Date: Sun, 26 Sep 2004 22:44:42 -0400 (EDT)
From: Seth Breidbart <sethb@...ix.com>
To: bugtraq@...urityfocus.com
Subject: Re: Diebold Global Election Management System (GEMS) Backdoor Account    Allows Authenticated Users to Modify Votes

Claudius Li <aprentic@...tae.net> wrote:

> This book has a whole section on electronic voting. In it,
> Mr. Schneier lists several thing which we expect a voting system to
> provide; anonymity, accountability, verifiability, and others. He
> also points out that there is a theoretical limit to the level to
> which all of these can be satisfied. That is, we can never guarantee
> all of them with 100% confidence. This limit seems to extended to
> all voting systems whether they are electronic, paper based,
> clay-shards-in-an-amphora, or raised hands.
. . .
> So my question is, given that this seems to be a solved problem why
> is there so much debate on finding the solution? Surely I am missing
> something obvious.

First, such methods provide confidence only to those of us capable of
understanding them.

Second, to those of us as above, they provide confidence only to the
extent that we trust the code being run (which at the least requires
it to run on our own computers, and preferably is written by us; I'd
trust code I wrote, even though it might have bugs; I'd trust code
Bruce wrote, because I know and trust him.  I'd trust, to a lesser
degree, code that Bruce vetted, because I know how hard it is to
examine code and how easy it is to slip something in that's very hard
to find.)

Paper-verified-voting is easily understood and verifiable by
_anybody_.  Tricky cryptographic protocols are understood by few and
verifiable by a lot fewer.  And, if the protocol is run on a computer
I don't control using code I don't control, then I have no confidence
no matter what protocol it _claims_ to use.

Seth