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

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Message-ID: <MDEHLPKNGKAHNMBLJOLKOEBHOKAA.davids@webmaster.com>
Date: Tue, 28 Sep 2004 12:01:41 -0700
From: "David Schwartz" <davids@...master.com>
To: <bugtraq@...urityfocus.com>
Subject: RE: Diebold Global Election Management System (GEMS) Backdoor Account    Allows Authenticated Users to Modify Votes



> 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.)

	This criticism is not correct. The whole point of cryptographically-secure
voting systems is that you *don't* have to trust the code being run. If your
vote wasn't counted, you can trivially demontrate this. If a group of
Democrats in Florida want ot make sure all their members votes were counted,
they can easily do so. If someone pressures you to vote a particular way,
you can prove that it is impossible for anyone to know how you voted. And so
on.

	With the schemes proposed, about the only thing someone can do is
physically prevent you from voting. Any other kind of tampering would be
detectable by anyone who audited the cryptographic records. All you need to
do is require that those records be public.

	DS