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If it makes you feel better, the Australian government said the same thing: "Ronaldson refused to table any documents relating to the case, stating that publis

If it makes you feel better, the Australian government said the same thing: "Ronaldson refused to table any documents relating to the case, stating that publishing the source code could lead to the EasyCount software being hacked. "In relation to the source code for the Senate counting system, I am advised that publication of the software could leave the voting system open to hacking or manipulation," he said. "In addition, I am advised that the AEC classifies the relevant software as commercial-in-confidence as it also underpins the industrial and fee-for-service election counting systems."" [1] Australia's federal senate vote count software is a Visual Basic application. It was developed when an upgrade to Windows 2000 broke the previous COBOL application. [2] [1] http://www.zdnet.com/article/government-blocks-aec-source-code-release-on-hacking-fears/ http://www.zdnet.com/article/government-blocks-aec-source-co... [2] http://www.itnews.com.au/news/the-tech-behind-was-senate-recount-360504 http://www.itnews.com.au/news/the-tech-behind-was-senate-rec...

andkenneth 10y ago
I don't see the huge issue with using VB. You can engineer a solution in a modern language terribly, and similarly engineer a VB application well. However I do suspect that they engineered the VB application terribly. But them using VB should not automatically disqualify them from writing good code.
onion2k 10y ago
These politicians are right - simply opening the existing source, with all it's flaws, bugs, and security holes, would be dangerous. It would be a huge help to any malicious party. I don't think they're suggesting open source is worse from a security point of view; they're saying that you can't open up an existing product without doing a lot of work first. Where they are wrong is in the assumption that keeping the source closed makes them safe from an attack.
- kavalg 10y ago
  To some extent yes, but this is only good if you can make sure that not a single malicious adversary has access to the source code. My assumption would be that in the voting case, the ones in power do have access to the code, which is actually worse than open sourcing it. Offtopic: IMHO, the only way to fix the voting software issue is to deanonymize the voting process to some extent, which is a hard problem by itself too.

andkenneth 10y ago

I don't see the huge issue with using VB. You can engineer a solution in a modern language terribly, and similarly engineer a VB application well. However I do suspect that they engineered the VB application terribly. But them using VB should not automatically disqualify them from writing good code.

onion2k 10y ago

These politicians are right - simply opening the existing source, with all it's flaws, bugs, and security holes, would be dangerous. It would be a huge help to any malicious party. I don't think they're suggesting open source is worse from a security point of view; they're saying that you can't open up an existing product without doing a lot of work first. Where they are wrong is in the assumption that keeping the source closed makes them safe from an attack.

kavalg 10y ago
To some extent yes, but this is only good if you can make sure that not a single malicious adversary has access to the source code. My assumption would be that in the voting case, the ones in power do have access to the code, which is actually worse than open sourcing it. Offtopic: IMHO, the only way to fix the voting software issue is to deanonymize the voting process to some extent, which is a hard problem by itself too.