The blogosphere is (understandably) currently awash with analysis, information, facts, rumors, and speculation about possible voting fraud in the 2004 US elections. Internet-enabled electronic voting seems like a good idea in theory, but in practice is proving to be fraught with possible security and verification issues.

Blackboxvoting.org is a clearing house with a wealth of information about current electronic voting technology in use.

A recent (and as yet unverified) rumour is that Dr Avi Rubin of John Hopkins University and his students have looked at the code for the infamous Diebold voting machines and found a few surprises:

(from an email forwarded to me by Sander Hicks)

> Subject: !!! BREAKING - DIEBOLD SOURCE CODE !!!
> Date: Thu, 11 Nov 2004 01:27:29 +0000
>
>
> E-MAIL RECEIVED EARLY AM NOVEMBER 10,
> 2004
>
>
> Dr. Avi Rubin is currently Professor of Computer
> Science at John Hopkins University. He
> “accidently”got his hands on a copy of the Diebold
> software program–Diebold’s source code–which runs
> their e-voting machines.
> Dr. Rubin’s students pored over 48,609 lines of
> code that make up this software. One line in
> partictular stood out over all the rest:
>
>
> #defineDESKEY((des_KEY8F2654hd4″
>
> All commercial programs have provisions to be
> encrypted so as to protect them from having their
> contents read or changed by anyone not having the
> key..The line that staggered the Hopkin’s team was
> that the method used to encrypt the Diebold machines
> was a method called Digital Encryption Standard
> (DES), a code that was broken in 1997 and is NO
> LONGER USED by anyone to secure prograns.F2654hd4
> was the key to the encryption. Moreover, because the
> KEY was IN the source code, all Diebold machines
> would respond to the same key. Unlock one, you have
> then ALL unlocked.

See also dailykos and Legitgov.org