Comments on: No Voting Machine Virus in New York-23 Election http://blog.verifiedvoting.org/2009/11/20/212 promoting transparent and verifiable elections Sat, 26 Nov 2011 12:44:10 +0000 hourly 1 http://wordpress.org/?v=3.3.1 By: Bo Lipari http://blog.verifiedvoting.org/2009/11/20/212/comment-page-1#comment-6 Bo Lipari Fri, 20 Nov 2009 19:23:48 +0000 http://blog.verifiedvoting.org/?p=212#comment-6 Q - What exactly is the difference between a “virus” and a “bug”? A - When talking about a 'virus', it refers to a malicious program which is designed to propagate itself to do it's nasty work. A bug, while also a problem which must be addressed, is not an agent actively trying to mess up systems, and it does not self propagate to systems which do not already contain the offending code. Q- If it’s just a bug, is there testing, besides in a real election that might have uncovered it? A - Absolutely. A good pre-election test should reveal this type of problem. Indeed, that's what happened in NY, testing discovered the problem PRIOR to the election. The ensuing procedural problem was a failure to identify all the machines that might be affected, but pre-election testing discovered the bug. However, this problem should have been discovered before pre-election testing - by Dominion, in-house, before the code was ever released to NY. I maintain that Dominion should have in-house testing robust enough to turn up this bug before it was ever sent out. This was a basic, easily discoverable defect that could have and should have been caught by the vendor long before the code shipped. This is indicative of the very poor state of quality control testing conducted by the voting machine vendors. Q – What exactly is the difference between a “virus” and a “bug”?
A – When talking about a ‘virus’, it refers to a malicious program which is designed to propagate itself to do it’s nasty work. A bug, while also a problem which must be addressed, is not an agent actively trying to mess up systems, and it does not self propagate to systems which do not already contain the offending code.

Q- If it’s just a bug, is there testing, besides in a real election that might have uncovered it?

A – Absolutely. A good pre-election test should reveal this type of problem. Indeed, that’s what happened in NY, testing discovered the problem PRIOR to the election. The ensuing procedural problem was a failure to identify all the machines that might be affected, but pre-election testing discovered the bug.

However, this problem should have been discovered before pre-election testing – by Dominion, in-house, before the code was ever released to NY. I maintain that Dominion should have in-house testing robust enough to turn up this bug before it was ever sent out. This was a basic, easily discoverable defect that could have and should have been caught by the vendor long before the code shipped. This is indicative of the very poor state of quality control testing conducted by the voting machine vendors.

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