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A spokesman for Sequoia, Alfie Charles, said that the software that had been taken was an older version that had been substantially modified. Possible security flaws in that software, which were discussed in the Wired account do not constitute an actual threat to security, he said.
Mr. Charles also emphasized that his company’s leak was unlike that of Diebold, which had left much of the purloined data unprotected on its own site. The Sequoia software was taken from the servers of a “grossly negligent” contractor to Sequoia, and not from the company itself, he said.
That defense does not sway Prof. Rebecca Mercuri, an specialist in election technology who teaches computer science at Bryn Mawr College. The fact that the software of both companies was not protected raises questions about their security, she said.
“Are these companies staffed by folks completely ignorant of computer security,” she said, “or are they just blatantly flaunting that they can breach every possible rule of protocol and still sell voting machines everywhere with impunity?”
Mr. Bear of Diebold said the election security and the virtual walls around his company’s computer network are different; “You’re looking at apples and oranges,” he said. Of the security breach, he said, “We acknowledge that was unfortunate that that occurred.” But the “security and sanctity of the election process,” he said, has been proved by the Science Applications International Corporation report.
Mr. Bear said that Sequoia planned to submit its software to Aviel D. Rubin, a computer security researcher at Johns Hopkins and the leader of the team that analyzed the Diebold code. Mr. Rubin said he was optimistic that the relationship with Sequoia would be less adversarial.
“It’s very different from the way that Diebold has been doing things.” Mr. Rubin, who has received a cease-and-desist notice from Diebold because of his research, said, “The solution is to stop selling insecure voting machines and not to continue threatening students who are only trying to protect our democracy.”
