Hacking of voting machines put on hold

San Francisco Chronicle      November 29, 2005
 
Sacramento A state-sanctioned attempt at hacking one brand of electronic voting machines will not occur Wednesday, Secretary of State Bruce McPherson said Monday at what's billed as the nation's first summit on voting machine testing.

The hacker, a computer security expert from Finland, needs more time to prepare before trying to show that the latest voting machine model made by Diebold Election Systems is vulnerable to attacks by hackers.

"We have imposed the strictest voting system tests in the country. We think this should be part of it too," McPherson said about the attempted hack.

California and its 58 local election officials face a Jan. 1 deadline to comply with requirements imposed by the federal Help America Vote Act of 2002.

Among them is creation of a statewide database of voters and allowing disabled persons to vote unaided. The state requires all electronic voting machines have a paper-ballot backup to record votes for the June 2006 primary.

Diebold's new voting machine system had its certification for use yanked in May 2004 by then Secretary of State Kevin Shelley. It has failed to win it back.

Last May, Harri Hursti, a computer security expert from Finland who has been asked by Secretary of State Bruce McPherson to attempt to infiltrate one of the voting machines made by Diebold, successfully hacked a Diebold voting machine in Florida, changed election results and ed a new program that flashed the message "Are we having fun yet?" on the machine's screen.

The 1 1/2 day summit, with representatives of 23 states and 18 local California election officials among its attendees, is designed to help the state create the best approach to testing voting machines for reliability and accuracy.

A public hearing is scheduled for February to synthesize the summit's results.