Surprise! More Diebold Problems As They Expose Memory Cards To Viruses
from the didn't-see-that-coming dept
As if there haven't been enough problems with
Diebold e-voting equipment (all of which they pretty much brush off or ignore). Ed Felten, who has been
pointing out numerous security flaws with Diebold machines has found another one. It turns out that the memory cards that are used to store votes on some of the machines, the same memory cards that Felten showed was susceptible to viruses, are
being placed into a variety of laptops that have not been checked to make sure they're free of spyware. Apparently, election workers are expected to put the memory cards into laptops in order to transfer the votes to CD-ROM (and, no I won't even start to get into why you should need to transfer votes to CD-ROM). The laptops in question, though, were either the election workers personal laptops or a bunch that were just "gathered from around the office." How many of those laptops (especially the personal ones) do you think are infected with spyware and viruses? Especially when you consider how many election workers are freaking out over the new machines because they're
not at all technically savvy. What kind of e-voting company would think it's somehow "secure" to require people to transfer votes using their personal laptop? In the meantime, of course, we eagerly await Diebold's expected brushing off of this story, complete with insults directed at Felton (as per usual) and some sort of claim about how the whole thing isn't a problem at all due to some bogus "security" procedure they have in place.
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Enough Already
Still waiting....
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why
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Whoops!
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WTH?
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This message is infected
How many of those laptops (especially the personal ones) do you think are infected with spyware and viruses?
Based on my experience, probably all of them. I just finished saving a personal machine for a coworker ("It just keeps freezing, can you take a look?") It took 6 hours of scanning, scrubbing, patching, and repeating to clear all of the trojans, keyloggers, backdoors, spambots and spyware that kept tripping over each other. I'm routinely surprised that some of these personal machines boot at all.
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Silly question...
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Re: Silly question...
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