Princeton study and video: how to hack a Diebold machine

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Video here.  Executive summary here.  Full research paper here.

The main findings of our study are:
  1. Malicious software running on a single voting machine can steal votes with little if any risk of detection. The malicious software can modify all of the records, audit logs, and counters kept by the voting machine, so that even careful forensic examination of these records will find nothing amiss. We have constructed demonstration software that carries out this vote-stealing attack.
  2. Anyone who has physical access to a voting machine, or to a memory card that will later be inserted into a machine, can install said malicious software using a simple method that takes as little as one minute. In practice, poll workers and others often have unsupervised access to the machines.
  3. AccuVote-TS machines are susceptible to voting-machine viruses

Those who cannot remember the past… work at the Washington Post

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Jon notices some eerie familiarity in the current run-up to attacking Iraq Iran:

page A17 of the Washington Post today:

U.N. INSPECTORS DISPUTE IRAN REPORT BY HOUSE PANEL
Paper on Nuclear Aims Called Dishonest

page A18 of the Washington Post exactly four years ago this week:

EVIDENCE ON IRAQ CHALLENGED
Experts Question if Tubes Were Meant for Weapons Program

Oy.  When we got to this part of the story in Groundhog Day, Bill Murray started trying to drive himself off a cliff.

I’ve edited the key lines to quote with clarity.  But read Jon’s whole post.

 

Those who cannot remember the past… work at the Washington Post

Posted on by

Jon notices some eerie familiarity in the current run-up to attacking Iraq Iran:

page A17 of the Washington Post today:

U.N. INSPECTORS DISPUTE IRAN REPORT BY HOUSE PANEL
Paper on Nuclear Aims Called Dishonest

page A18 of the Washington Post exactly four years ago this week:

EVIDENCE ON IRAQ CHALLENGED
Experts Question if Tubes Were Meant for Weapons Program

Oy.  When we got to this part of the story in Groundhog Day, Bill Murray started trying to drive himself off a cliff.

I’ve edited the key lines to quote with clarity.  But read Jon’s whole post.

 

Wish there were something left to say

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In Iraq, the killings are coming so fast that the military now manages the murder rate by distinguishing people killed by drive-bys, torture, and execution from people killed by bombs, mortars, and rockets.

Sixty-five more today, whatever you call them.

Meanwhile,

A top secret report by a Marine Corps intelligence officer says there’s no chance the U.S. military can end insurgent violence in al-Anbar, and no viable government institutions or chance for political progress anytime soon.

The commanders on the ground want three times as many troops as they have.  But Team Chimpy simply has no plans (and probably no viable means, even if desired) to send them.

Instead, we get a 9-11 address that turns into a partisan campaign speech and rationalization for staying a course in Iraq which simply is not working.

I wish I had more to say or some insightful comment.  But those who opposed the war years ago made the same points then that need to be made now.  You’ve already heard them.

2672 U.S. soldiers dead, 19910 wounded.  Uncounted tens of thousands of Iraqi civilians killed.  No end in sight.  Not enough troops.  Never have been.

But we’re staying the course.

And dancing with the stars.