**** April Fools Edition**** Moving on

[Dave Farber <dave () farber net>]

**** April Fools Edition****

Date: Thu, 01 Apr 2004 07:32:24 -0500
From: Avi Rubin <rubin () jhu edu>
Subject: Moving on
To: Dave Farber <dave () farber net>

**** April Fools Edition****

As many of you know, this past year my career took an unexpected turn, as I 
become embroiled in the issue of the security of electronic voting. While 
initially, I was very happy with my move from AT&T Labs to academia last 
year, I now think that this is not the place for me to carry out my new 
mission to protect democracy. So, as of May 1, 2004, I will be leaving 
Johns Hopkins and taking on a new position where I feel I will be best able 
to make a difference. You may be surprised to hear this, but after several 
weeks of intense and secret negotiations, I am going to join Diebold as 
their Chief Security Officer. I know that many of you may feel that I have 
"sold out" by doing this, but please hear me out. Yes, the salary is 
astronomical, and yes, I will no longer be able to say what I really think 
about the insecurity of their machines, but there's more to it than that. 
Think of the possibilities of my new position. I will have the ability to 
almost single-handedly pick our next President. However, paperless and 
fully electronic DREs are only the beginning. What about paperless ATMs? As 
Diebold CSO, I will be able to help them design ATMs that not only do not 
carry receipts, but that also do not dispense money. Instead, we can reuse 
the smartcards from the voting systems and dispense electronic cash. 
Without the need for paper money and paper receipts, the machines would 
never need to be serviced, thus saving both in convenience and money. I 
think that in my new role at Diebold, I will be able to help them branch 
out into other businesses. I would like to get them into the paperless 
lottery business. Think of the convenience that would bring. No more 
waiting in line to buy lottery tickets, they could just be downloaded from 
the Internet and stored on USB dongles. Sure, it is true that it would be 
very hard to actually verify who the winners are, and forgery of lottery 
numbers would be trivial, but don't be a luddite, electronic systems are 
the wave of the future, and we want to be on the cutting edge. Besides, in 
our marketing tests, people LOVED these paperless lotteries and cashless ATMS.

Another thing I really like about my new position at Diebold is that I 
believe they are one of the best companies at turning prototypes into 
production systems. The secret that they (or should I now say 'we') have is 
that there is no need to do anything. What others haven't realized is that 
you can save a bundle by *using* the prototype as the production system. 
It's so much easier than actually finishing the development and testing. 
Why others industries haven't figured this out is beyond me. Think, for 
example, of how much less time and money it would cost to develop airplanes 
if you cut the software budget by a factor of 10.

So, I hope that you will support me in my career change. I believe that it 
is time to try to really make a difference, and the best way to do that is 
to go where the action is.

Avi Rubin


**************************************************
Avi Rubin
Associate Professor, Computer Science
Technical Director, Information Security Institute
Johns Hopkins University

Future Chief Security Officer
Diebold Corporation

rubin () jhu edu
410-516-8177 (Voice)
443-264-2406 (Fax)
http://www.cs.jhu.edu/~rubin/
**************************************************

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