Avi Rubin
Avi Rubin
Aviel David "Avi" Rubinis an expert in systems and networking security. He is a graduate of the University of Michigan and Professor of Computer Science at Johns Hopkins University, Technical Director of the Information Security Institute at Johns Hopkins, Director of ACCURATE, and President and co-founder of Independent Security Evaluators. In 2002, he was elected to the Board of Directors of the USENIX Association for a two-year term...
NationalityAmerican
ProfessionScientist
Date of Birth8 November 1967
CountryUnited States of America
The basic idea behind a paper trail is that you take one of these electronic systems and you augment it with a printer that prints out people's vote as they vote.
You have to attack your own system in order to understand how hackers are attacking your system and how to defend against them.
I think that, you know, looking at all the systems that I've been studying over the last several years, that paper ballots with a precinct optical scan counters and random audits is the best system that we can have.
People have jumped on the electronic voting bandwagon, thinking that will solve the problems, ... But these systems are largely untested.
In any election, it's important that the public perceive that the election is held fairly.
Somebody with questionable moral judgment isn't someone you want to have control of your networks.
In the car industry they have to build with safety in mind. Car makers couldn't get away with this. They're more concerned with the bottom line and profits, and that's upsetting.
Our country moved to electronic voting in public elections before the technology was ready, ... This center will develop the fundamental science necessary for secure, accessible, trustworthy and transparent voting.
It is a complete and devastating break of the security of wireless networks.
I don't think with today's technology we can have a voting system that is fully electronic that can be trusted.
It's the concept of having a computer voting machine that bothers me, more so than the specific poor implementation that we have from Diebold.
My position hasn't changed over the years. Which is that online voting is a very unsafe idea and a very bad idea and something I think no technological breakthrough I can foresee can ever change.
Many of the touted advantages of electronic voting can still be achieved with paper ballots if you use a computerized ballot marking scheme.
If our financial industry regarded security the way the health-care sector does, I would stuff my cash in a mattress under my bed.