neonascent

Princeton university has conducted tests on US electronic voting machines that were used in the last two elections (Diebold AccuVote-TS Voting Machine), and found them to be (extremely) vulnerable to viruses and vote maniplulation software.

This should be absolutely no surprise what-so-ever. These machines are effectively PCs, and show less security precaution than the average Internet café computer. They are set to boot from flash memory, and presumably were not provided with malware/virus checking tools at the toll this would take on voter trust. (ie accepting the possibility of viruses is opening a can of worms).

In the Princeton demonstration video the demonstrator is careful to emphasise the criminality of the virus loader, and also the fact that what we are watching is a simulated election, but I think this is a pointed comment. I get the impression they are understating the importance of this research for interlectual impact - the audience realises themselves how easy it would be to apply this to a real election.