Thanks to all who commented on this thread. It seems clear that
OpenBIOS won't enhance voting security.
Special thanks to tarl-b2@tarl.net for the tip on
"trusted boot". That hardware/firmware solution appears to go a long way
toward preventing any tampering with BIOS. It isn't really necessary to
have a voting system that is
impossible to subvert, as long as there
are techniques like buying absentee ballots, gerrymandering and preventing
certain groups from voting that are far easier to implement or provide far more
votes per dollar.
Chuck Gaston
In a message dated 7/23/2013 4:28:55 P.M. Eastern Daylight Time,
tarl-b2@tarl.net writes:
On
2013-Jul-23 16:15 , Mark Morgan Lloyd
wrote:
>>>
>>
>> And having the USB keyboard
work (which means USB HID support, USB hub
>> support, USB controller
support, PCI support, etc).
>
> Although IIRC there's a simplified
protocol for the keyboard,
> specifically for BIOS support. I've seen
people discussing that in the
> context of devices such as the Parallax
Propeller which don't really
> have USB support.
Not for USB.
Whatever they may be talking about, they aren't getting USB
- there's no
real way to enable EHCI/OHCI/UHCI/XHCI without implementing
the entire
shebang.
>>
>> Once the control of the hardware has been
taken over, there is no way
>> to take it back.
>
>
> Or put another way, you might /think/ you've regained
full control,
> but you can never /know/ :-)
The problem of
secure execution is fairly well understood. Google
"Verified Boot" or
"Trusted Boot". The implementations that take it
seriously do verification
of their PROM, sign it, and the hardware won't
let you start unless the
PROM is good. Then the PROM verifies the
signature of each component as
it's brought in (I was recently involved
in implementing public key
verification for such).
It doesn't guarantee bug-free code, but it
verifies that the code you
are running is what you think it
is.
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