[E-voting] [a.oostveen@rathenau.nl: BREAKING NEWS]

[Aengus Lawlor]

On Thursday, November 02, 2006 6:33 AM [EDT],
Colm MacCarthaigh <colm at stdlib.net> wrote:

> On Thu, Nov 02, 2006 at 11:17:29AM +0000, Michael McMahon wrote:
>> Colm MacCarthaigh wrote:
>>> On Wed, Nov 01, 2006 at 06:36:53PM -0500, Aengus Lawlor wrote:
>>>
>>>>  The Irish Times reports that electronic voting machines bought by
>>>>  the Irish government are not in danger of being bugged;
>>>>
>>>
>>> http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=B05wPomCjEY
>>>
>>>
>> Very good demo. I haven't got the Irish Times to hand. Do they offer
>> any scepticism about this "claim" that our machines are not in
>> danger?
>
> Nope, they just accept what the Dutch testing institute are saying. It
> is a bit bizarre what they are saying, since it's so demonstrably
> possible. The disparity seems to arise over differing tolerances for
> the signal levels. But as the demo shows, it works through walls and
> up to 25 metres away.

What it doesn't demonstrate is that the signal is "standard" enough that a 
singe receiver setup will work with a range of differen machines. If each 
receiver had to be "tweaked" to work, it would be less of a problem (though 
it would still be a real problem) than the problem with the Sdu machines, 
which one report I read said the whole screen could be read from a distance.

We had some discussion of Tempest stye attacks, I seem to recall. It'd be 
more than a little remiss of the CEV not to have tested that, given that the 
issue had been raised on this list.

Aengus