Bradblog: PA 'Directive' on Diebold Security Hole Word-for-Word Parroting

[Hissyspit]

http://www.bradblog.com/archives/00002830.htm

IDENTICAL DOCS: PA State 'Directive' on New Diebold Security Hole a Word-for-Word Parrot of Diebold's Own 'Notification' Sent to State
Media Then Reports Diebold's Downplaying of Threat as State's Own Assessment
(Why not just do away with the middle man and let Diebold run everything?)

"It is like the nuclear bomb for e-voting systems," said Avi Rubin, computer science professor at Johns Hopkins University. "It's the deal breaker. It really makes the security flaws that we found (in prior years) look trivial."
-- From Security Focus, 5/12/06

Pennsylvania officials warned local election registrars last week about the vulnerability in the mechanism that installs and upgrades software on Diebold equipment. It said the risk of the vulnerability being exploited was "low".
-- From AP, 5/11/06

The first graf above, quoting Rubin, comes from a superb and indepth article by Robert Lemos at Security Focus on the latest Diebold security disaster. We recommend his report for a host of reasons, amongst them; his broad coverage of dozens of the stories we've yelled and screamed about here at The BRAD BLOG over the past several months, but also because he adds loads of details to the latest Diebold mess which is finally being picked up by the mainstream media. Big time. (Here's an eye-popping compilation of scores of articles from just last Wednesday, Thursday and Friday, with many more to come.)

- snip -

We're often asked, by media folks and others, why it is that Election Officials seem to stand by their E-Voting Machines and Vendors, such as Diebold, ES&S and others, instead of holding them accountable and independently verifying their (usually unsupported) claims about the security and reliability of their voting machines -- as Leon County, FL Supervisor of Elections, Ion Sancho and Emery County, UT County Clerk, Bruce Funk, both rare exceptions -- did.

Setting aside that both Sancho and Funk have been fighting with state officials to hang on to their jobs ever since, The BRAD BLOG has obtained a few documents which underscore what's really at work in the bulk of Election Official/Election Machine Vendor relationships...

MORE

[PATRICK]

1. Bradblog's thesis

is that whatever the actual corruption involved the main thing is that the white man has landed bearing gifts to friendly aborigines. Too late they discover they have been had. People even replace their chiefs but now the guns and power of the Conquistadors are firmly entrenched.

That is at least when less civilized people will take up arms, but we are talking about civilized computer illiterate innocents who must take safety in being clueless and letting, as Bradblog suggests sarcastically, the vendors do everything from A to Z.

This is what is being constantly repeated by the HAVA invasion of rules and money and select vendors.

I keep repeating, where is equally clueless DNC leadership in not providing this news to the unwary? it endlessly repeats because our chiefs are even more dedicated victims than the little official in the hustings. This fight against cheating should have, could have been extremely effective at any time in the past several years if the DNC had simply woken up and did their job with simple communication and education.- even if HAVA went through over their objections or not.

[Hissyspit]

2. kicking in the middle of all this other stuff n/t

[Hissyspit]

3. kick