Everyone's favorite election judge, Avi Rubin's work on crippling vulnerabilities in Diebbold reminded me of Usenix security 2000, and what Blaine Burnham said in his speech (he was talking about Internet voting, but the same concepts apply):
So we're putting money at risk. With ecommerce were putting large money at risk, but if Coca-Cola lost its secret formula today, we'd be out Coca-Cola. It's not the end of the world, its just Coca-Cola, for crying out loud. And on a given day taste tests can't tell 'em apart anyway. With remote surgery, with invasive medicine, we're putting people at risk. The game is changing. And with Internet voting we're putting the very fabric of the country at risk...because of this changing threat model and because of what we are putting at risk, the game is no longer a game. We have to get extraordinarily serious about what we are doing.
Blaine Burnham also said in his talk that "Las Vegas is the monument to the failure of high school mathematics teachers." Hopefully this election won't be the monument to the failure of computer security.
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