Dailydave mailing list archives
Re: just got back from obama event
From: dan () geer org
Date: Mon, 27 Aug 2007 10:25:31 -0400
| | Someone should put up a "Hackers for Diebold" website. Motto: | Diebold: The technology you need, the election results you want! | Although it looks like Florida doesn't get to vote in the primary | anymore either way. | W.r.t. Diebold, they and all others suffer from a universal election commission requirement that might be worth discussion here. It is that on election day if something in an election machine breaks, then the (various) election commision(s) insist on being able to reload/restart on demand, and to do so with essentially unskilled help. The reason it might be worth discussion is a general design-level question for embedded systems -- do you or do you not want an embedded system to have a remote management interface. An argument "for" is "How else can we recover from design flaws found later?" An argument "against" is "A remote management interface is the openest invitation to mischief." All the actual engineers here will agree that, when building something, the outcome can be no better than the problem statement. I do know something about Diebold's election experience in Ohio, and it is consistent with my first remark, viz., the requirement for a mid-Election-Day correction. From the Atty. General's point of view, a DoS against the electorate due to something that he could fix but wasn't able to do so because of "security" is paramount. I also know that technology to absolutely lock down the configuration of the election machines he had did exist, had been bought, had been tested, and yet eventually foundered on the requirement I mentioned -- it was not possible to both lock the configuration and to make it field upgradable by cops and retirees. On the other point, I have nothing to offer to trump Howard Dean, but I do so enjoy watching. --dan _______________________________________________ Dailydave mailing list Dailydave () lists immunitysec com http://lists.immunitysec.com/mailman/listinfo/dailydave
Current thread:
- just got back from obama event Dave Aitel (Aug 25)
- Re: just got back from obama event Dave Aitel (Aug 26)
- Re: just got back from obama event endrazine useless (Aug 27)
- Re: just got back from obama event Dave Korn (Aug 27)
- Re: just got back from obama event Damian Gomez (Aug 27)
- Re: just got back from obama event endrazine useless (Aug 27)
- Re: just got back from obama event dan (Aug 27)
- Re: just got back from obama event Jordan Wiens (Aug 28)
- Re: just got back from obama event Dave Aitel (Aug 26)