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Will 'controlled open source' software take over election work? (NewsForge)Will 'controlled open source' software take over election work? (NewsForge)Posted Aug 20, 2004 13:58 UTC (Fri) by hummassa (subscriber, #307)In reply to: Will 'controlled open source' software take over election work? (NewsForge) by bdixon Parent article: Will 'controlled open source' software take over election work? (NewsForge)
" Ownership and visibility into the codebase that constitutes an open voting machine does not mean that we can be assured that a subversion hasn't been planted. It is impossible to be assured that inspection has found all subversions. "... but it is possible (even easy) to establish a system of distributed, formalized testing that finds /many/ possible subversions (read my other posts in this same thread)
" Solving this problem will take a codebase that is simpler and far more verifiable then either Windows or Linux. "... I won't argue this, the simpler the system, the easier to make it secure.
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Will 'controlled open source' software take over election work? (NewsForge) Posted Aug 20, 2004 18:28 UTC (Fri) by tzafrir (subscriber, #11501) [Link] No. This is practically impossible.
Yes, programs in OCAML (?) can be officially verified. How nice. But what about the implementation of the OCAML compiler? run-time environment? (which are probably written in C)?
What about the libraries and the kernel of the underlying OS? A formally-verifiable OS is, ATM, a non-practical academic research subject.
But then again, the aim is not a totally safe system, but a practically-safe system. If someone wants winning hard enough one can always take a shot at bribing citizens and other low-tech methods. See http://www.schneier.com/crypto-gram-0404.html#4 for a better insight.
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