Electronic voting machines infected with viruses?!?! (not yet)

Mon Nov 24 2003 00:00:00 GMT+0000 (Coordinated Universal Time)

Check out, "Nachi worm infected Diebold ATMs" by Kevin Poulsen at Security Focus. Why is this story on Diebold ATMs infected with viruses so interesting?

Diebold runs Windows CE on it's voting machines. Not only could votes be mis-recorded and/or stolen, but they could also be affected by viruses, worms and the like. The memos (currently the subject of an EFF/Stanford Clinic court case, OPG, Pavlosky and Smith v. Diebold) have revealed that Diebold doesn't get their Windows CE code certified (page 5) eventhough their technicians write a lot of it. (Jim March has been hard at work examining the memos.)

(For the Geeks: Granted, CE hasn't been specifically vulnerable to worms, but it could, of course, be vulnerable to one specifically designed for Diebold's version of CE. To boot, their Windows CE software isn't certified by election officials--they claim it is COTS or "commercial off-the-shelf" which doesn't need certification.)

Posted by joebeone at Noviembre 24, 2003 08:09 PM