Hackers test California voting machines

Adam Aviv says:

Prof. Matt Bishop of UC Davis, author of An Introduction to Computer Security, describes his recent work of hacking the California voting machines for the California Department of State on "Talk of the Nation Science Friday" on NPR.

Lo and behold, the voting machines have physical and software flaws, but of course, as seen before, the tallying software also has many flaws as well. He also makes a wonderful argument to allow independent researchers, hackers, to access and analyze systems in order to fix them.

It is a fascinating interview covering a wide range of topics surrounding the voting machine issues, but he also takes time to describe, in very understandable terms, the many intricacies of computer security in general. A must listen.

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Reader comment:

Andy Fell, Science Writer, UC Davis News Service says:

I see you just blogged about Matt Bishop's Red Team exercise on the California voting machines. I thought his NPR interview was pretty good too.

I've been helping Prof Bishop with the press on this and also writing about it on our blog, egghead. One of the interesting things I think is how much the local election officials are complaining and pushing back... Except for our own clerk here in Yolo County, Freddie Oakley. Oakley and Bishop happen to be friends, and she early on got him involved in getting their electronic voting machines up and running and getting security in place. And she’s enlisted comp sci students from UC Davis to help out with the machines on voting day.

“God bless ‘em, but my colleagues all over the state are panicking and I’m not,” she told the Davis Enterprise.