[CAVO] [VVSG-election] [VVSG-interoperability] Single Point of Failure - the Scan Head - RE: By November, Russian hackers could target voting machines

Thu Jul 28 15:11:30 UTC 2016

Thanks for the nod, John..

We have the first count systems in motion for build out in SF. The plan is
to utilize GPL v3 open source with COTS hardware..

The real obstacle has been the Microsoft / Intellectual Property lobbyist
stranglehold on the politicians that apparently runs through the business
leagues of the election administrators.  Currently the vendors are pushing
for " one more bite of the apple " before the jurisdictions follow New
Hampshire and CA toward open source systems.

Perhaps a memo should go out to the jurisdictions mentioning the looming
open source voting system availability .. and advising them to " stand in
place " regarding further purchases of proprietary systems.

Best-

Brent

On Thu, Jul 28, 2016 at 7:38 AM, Wack, John (Fed) <john.wack at nist.gov>
wrote:

> I hesitate to jump in, but I do agree that it’s very very important to get
> the election night count accurate.  I tend to think that no matter what,
> it’s a human process, a logistical nightmare for some locales, and that
> this needs to be recognized in technical discussions and recommendations.
> One of the best things to do, in my opinion, to make things more secure and
> more accurate, falls into the usability category for tabulation: perhaps
> election results shall not be released until such and such a time on the
> next day, say noon.  Pressure to get everything correct in a very short
> amount of time after a long day works against security and accuracy.  No
> matter what technology we use or how secure or whatever, it can’t erase the
> fact that the overall process is a very demanding management issue.
>
>
>
> The CDF work can help to make that easier, common identifiers for
> geopolitical geography and contests can help to make it easier, and there
> are probably a host of other items that could help to reduce the amount of
> time (and software required) to get all the equipment to work together
> smoothly.  So as I’m reading the posts, I’m thinking about future VVSG
> requirements to make all the equipment work together so that the overall
> tabulation process is more usable to the election people conducting it.  Of
> course, giving them more time to do would help significantly.
>
>
>
> Cheers, John
>
>
>
> *From:* vvsg-interoperability-bounces at nist.gov [mailto:
> vvsg-interoperability-bounces at nist.gov] *On Behalf Of *Arthur Keller
> *Sent:* Thursday, July 28, 2016 10:20 AM
> *To:* Stephen Berger <stephen.berger at suddenlink.net>
> *Cc:* vvsg-election <vvsg-election at nist.gov>; vvsg-pre-election <
> vvsg-pre-election at nist.gov>; vvsg-post-election <
> vvsg-post-election at nist.gov>; vvsg-interoperability <
> vvsg-interoperability at nist.gov>
> *Subject:* Re: [VVSG-interoperability] Single Point of Failure - the Scan
> Head - RE: By November, Russian hackers could target voting machines
>
>
>
> Thanks, Stephen. I think you mean scanner software is NEVER examined.
>
>
>
> Best regards,
>
> Arthur
>
>
> On Jul 28, 2016, at 7:02 AM, Stephen Berger <stephen.berger at suddenlink.net>
> wrote:
>
> Susan,
>
>
>
> Good points.
>
>
>
> Let add to the landscape that currently we have a single point of failure
> that I think deserves some attention.  That point is when the ballot is
> scanned.  Typically the scan mechanism is not specified and the initial
> processing software is not specified.  Almost all, actually to my knowledge
> all of the scanners first throw away a lot of information.  Modern scanner
> electronics is able to get excellent resolution and color differentiation.
> There is a lot that can be done with high quality can images.  However, the
> scanner software immediately throws away most of that information and make
> everything black or white.  This is done because it makes mark recognition
> easier and it saves on machine memory.  However, what is a vote is
> determined not off the image of the ballot but the processed image.  To
> make matters worse, neither the VVSG or any election official, decides when
> a pixel should be determined to be black or white or how many pixels make a
> valid mark.  This is left to each company and even each design team at each
> company.  Even worse, it is often decided by the scanner engine
> manufacturer and that software is very examined in any of our processes.
>
>
>
> It would seem worth paying some attention to what happens between the
> ballot being feed to the scanner and a decision being made about what votes
> are on that paper.  It also seems reasonable that election officials should
> be the ones deciding how big a mark is a valid mark and how various kinds
> of uncertain marks should be dealt with.
>
>
>
> Best Regards,
>
>
>
> Stephen Berger
>
> *TEM Consulting, LP*
>
> Web Site - *www.temconsulting.com <http://www.temconsulting.com>*
> E-MAIL - stephen.berger at ieee.org
> Phone - (512) 864-3365
> Mobile - (512) 466-0833
> FAX - (512) 869-8709
>
>
>
> *From:* vvsg-interoperability-bounces at nist.gov [
> mailto:vvsg-interoperability-bounces at nist.gov
> <vvsg-interoperability-bounces at nist.gov>] *On Behalf Of *Susan Eustis
> *Sent:* Thursday, July 28, 2016 8:31 AM
> *To:* Arthur Keller <ark at soe.ucsc.edu>
> *Cc:* vvsg-election <vvsg-election at nist.gov>; vvsg-pre-election <
> vvsg-pre-election at nist.gov>; vvsg-post-election <
> vvsg-post-election at nist.gov>; vvsg-interoperability <
> vvsg-interoperability at nist.gov>
> *Subject:* Re: [VVSG-interoperability] By November, Russian hackers could
> target voting machines
>
>
>
> Arthur, I agree, I concur.   My new book lays this scenario out in detail
> and provides suggestions for preventing the hacks, ways to protect the
> integrity of the election results, there needs to be safe guards and
> automatic recounts the very next day with observers representing all
> candidates, no matter whether the election was close or not.  There needs
> to be an audit trail and a way to protect the integrity of the balloting
> that occurs before election day.  There needs to be a way for the observers
> to make a duplicate of the original ballots as the recount goes on and to
> run those through their own counting scanner to determine the validity of
> the election.  There needs to be a way to interrupt the recount at any time
> if someone has to go to the bathroom or falls asleep so that the recount
> process has continuity and integrity.  Things like this.
>
> Susan
>
>
>
> On Thu, Jul 28, 2016 at 9:22 AM, Arthur Keller <ark at soe.ucsc.edu> wrote:
>
> But vote tabulation and especially roll up is often connected to the
> Internet. And with the lack of effective audits in more jurisdictions,
> hacking the Internet-connected vote tabulation systems would do the trick.
>
>
>
> In particular, if the vote tabulation system is connected to the web
> reporting system, then that's an avenue for attack.
>
>
>
> There's a difference between auditable and actually audited. If the
> results are sufficiently skewed on election night, post election audits may
> not matter anyway. They didn't even matter in Florida in 2000 where the
> election was close.
>
>
>
> Could the programming of electronic voting machines be hacked in a Stuxnet
> type attack while they are loaded with the election data file?
>
>
>
> If China can hack Google, do we really believe there's no way Russia can't
> hack enough counties or states to change the outcome of the presidential
> election?
>
>
>
> Best regards,
>
> Arthur
>
>
> On Jul 28, 2016, at 6:07 AM, Deutsch, Herb <hdeutsch at essvote.com> wrote:
>
> Voting machines are not attached to the internet.  You can’t hack them
> without physical control and that is auditable.
>
>
>
> *From:* vvsg-interoperability-bounces at nist.gov [
> mailto:vvsg-interoperability-bounces at nist.gov
> <vvsg-interoperability-bounces at nist.gov>] *On Behalf Of *Arthur Keller
> *Sent:* Thursday, July 28, 2016 12:30 AM
> *To:* John Wack
> *Cc:* vvsg-election; vvsg-pre-election; vvsg-post-election;
> vvsg-interoperability
> *Subject:* [VVSG-interoperability] By November, Russian hackers could
> target voting machines
>
>
>
> What should the election community do about this threat?
>
>
>
> Best regards,
>
> Arthur
>
>
>
>
> https://www.washingtonpost.com/posteverything/wp/2016/07/27/by-november-russian-hackers-could-target-voting-machines/
>
>
> By November, Russian hackers could target voting machines
> If Russia really is responsible, there's no reason political interference
> would end with the DNC emails.
>
> [image: Image removed by sender.]
>
> By Bruce Schneier July 27 at 3:10 PM
>
> Bruce Schneier <https://www.schneier.com> is a security technologist and
> a lecturer at the Kennedy School of Government at Harvard University. His
> latest book is *Data and Goliath: The Hidden Battles to Collect Your Data
> and Control Your World* <https://www.schneier.com/book-dg.html>.
>
> Russia was behind the hacks into the Democratic National Committee’s
> computer network that led to the release of thousands of internal emails
> just before the party’s convention began, U.S. intelligence agencies have
> reportedly
> <http://www.nytimes.com/2016/07/27/world/europe/russia-dnc-hack-emails.html>
> concluded.
>
> The FBI is investigating. WikiLeaks promises
> <http://www.cnn.com/2016/07/26/politics/julian-assange-dnc-email-leak-hack/> there
> is more data to come. The political nature
> <http://www.defenseone.com/technology/2016/07/how-putin-weaponized-wikileaks-influence-election-american-president/130163/>
> of this cyberattack means that Democrats and Republicans are trying to spin
> this as much as possible. Even so, we have to accept that someone is
> attacking our nation’s computer systems in an apparent attempt to influence
> a presidential election. This kind of cyberattack targets the very core of
> our democratic process. And it points to the possibility of an even worse
> problem in November — that our election systems and our voting machines
> could be vulnerable to a similar attack.
>
> If the intelligence community has indeed ascertained that Russia is to
> blame, our government needs to decide what to do in response. This is
> difficult because the attacks are politically partisan, but it is
> <http://arstechnica.com/security/2016/06/guest-editorial-the-dnc-hack-and-dump-is-what-cyberwar-looks-like/>
>  essential
> <https://www.balloon-juice.com/2016/07/26/we-are-at-cyber-war-so-what-exactly-do-we-do-about-it/>. If
> foreign governments learn that they can influence our elections with
> impunity, this opens the door for future manipulations
> <http://www.huffingtonpost.com/michael-gregg/top-six-ways-hackers-coul_b_7832730.html>,
> both document thefts and dumps like this one that we see and more subtle
> manipulations that we don’t see.
>
> Retaliation is politically fraught and could have serious consequences,
> but this is an attack against our democracy. We need to confront Russian
> President Vladimir Putin in some way — politically, economically or in
> cyberspace — and make it clear that we will not tolerate this kind of
> interference by any government. Regardless of your political leanings this
> time, there’s no guarantee the next country that tries to manipulate our
> elections will share your preferred candidates.
>
> Even more important, we need to secure our election systems before autumn.
> If Putin’s government has already used a cyberattack to attempt to help Trump
> win
> <http://talkingpointsmemo.com/edblog/trump-putin-yes-it-s-really-a-thing>,
> there’s no reason to believe he won’t do it again — especially now that Trump
> is inviting the “help.”
> <https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/democratic-national-convention-obama-biden-kaine-set-to-tout-clinton-as-commander-in-chief/2016/07/27/afc57884-53e8-11e6-bbf5-957ad17b4385_story.html?hpid=hp_hp-top-table-main_trump-1230pm%3Ahomepage%2Fstory>
>
> Over the years, more and more states have moved to electronic voting
> machines and have flirted with Internet voting. These systems are
> <http://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2015/04/meet-the-e-voting-machine-so-easy-to-hack-it-will-take-your-breath-away/>
>  insecure
> <https://www.statslife.org.uk/significance/politics/2288-how-trustworthy-are-electronic-voting-systems-in-the-us>
>  and <https://www.salon.com/2011/09/27/votinghack/> vulnerable
> <https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2015/apr/15/virginia-hacking-voting-machines-security>
>  to
> <http://whowhatwhy.org/2015/08/31/foreigners-could-hack-us-elections-experts-say/>
>  attack
> <http://www.popsci.com/gadgets/article/2012-11/how-i-hacked-electronic-voting-machine>
> .
>
> *[Your iPhone just got less secure. Blame the FBI.
> <https://www.washingtonpost.com/posteverything/wp/2016/03/29/your-iphone-just-got-a-lot-less-secure-and-the-fbi-is-to-blame/>]
> *
>
> But while computer security experts like me
> <https://www.schneier.com/blog/archives/2004/11/the_problem_wit.html>
>  have sounded
> <https://www.giac.org/paper/gsec/3687/inherent-problems-electronic-voting-systems/105962>
>  the <http://homepage.cs.uiowa.edu/%7Ejones/voting/congress.html> alarm
> <https://cs.stanford.edu/people/eroberts/cs181/projects/2006-07/electronic-voting/index_files/page0004.html>
>  for <https://citp.princeton.edu/research/voting/> many years, states
> have largely ignored the threat, and the machine manufacturers have thrown
> up enough obfuscating babble that election officials are largely mollified.
>
> We no longer
> <https://scontent.xx.fbcdn.net/hphotos-xlp1/v/t1.0-9/12115815_699872940152206_2266030088084252627_n.png?oh=2a4e5e944a5feadb7e133dd8c57be376&oe=57AD8C92>
>  have time <https://xkcd.com/463/> for that. We must ignore the machine
> manufacturers’ spurious claims
> <https://www.salon.com/2006/09/13/diebold_3/> of security, create tiger
> teams to test the machines’ and systems’ resistance to attack, drastically
> increase their cyber-defenses and take them offline if we can’t guarantee
> their security online.
>
> Longer term, we need to return to election systems that are secure from
> manipulation. This means voting machines with voter-verified paper audit
> trails
> <http://votingmachines.procon.org/view.answers.php?questionID=000291>,
> and no
> <http://engineering.jhu.edu/magazine/2016/06/internet-voting-nonstarter/>
> Internet
> <https://www.verifiedvoting.org/resources/internet-voting/vote-online/>
> voting
> <http://www.scientificamerican.com/article.cfm?id=2012-presidential-election-electronic-voting>. I
> know it’s slower and less convenient to stick to the old-fashioned way, but
> the security risks are simply too great.
>
> There are other ways to attack our election system on the Internet besides
> hacking voting machines or changing vote tallies: deleting voter records
> <http://thehill.com/policy/cybersecurity/278231-election-fraud-feared-as-hackers-target-voter-records>,
> hijacking candidate or party websites, targeting and intimidating campaign
> workers or donors. There have already been multiple instances of
> political doxing
> <https://www.schneier.com/blog/archives/2015/11/the_rise_of_pol.html> —
> publishing personal information and documents about a person or
> organization — and we could easily see more of it in this election cycle.
> We need to take these risks much more seriously than before.
>
> Government interference with foreign elections isn’t new, and in fact,
> that’s something the United States itself has repeatedly done
> <https://www.lawfareblog.com/what-old-and-new-and-scary-russias-probable-dnc-hack> in
> recent history. Using cyberattacks to influence elections is newer but has
> been done before, too — most notably in Latin America
> <http://www.bloomberg.com/features/2016-how-to-hack-an-election/>.
> Hacking of voting machines isn’t new, either. But what is new is a foreign
> government interfering with a U.S. national election on a large scale. Our
> democracy cannot tolerate it, and we as citizens cannot accept it.
>
> *[Why would Russia try to hack the U.S. election? Because it might work.
> <https://www.washingtonpost.com/posteverything/wp/2016/07/26/why-would-russia-interfere-in-the-u-s-election-because-it-usually-works/>]
> *
>
> Last April, the Obama administration issued
> <https://www.whitehouse.gov/blog/2015/04/01/our-latest-tool-combat-cyber-attacks-what-you-need-know>
>  an
> <https://www.whitehouse.gov/blog/2015/04/01/expanding-our-ability-combat-cyber-threats>
>  executive
> <https://medium.com/the-white-house/a-new-tool-against-cyber-threats-1a30c188bc4#.jgbalohyi>
>  order
> <https://www.whitehouse.gov/the-press-office/2015/04/01/executive-order-blocking-property-certain-persons-engaging-significant-m> outlining
> how we as a nation respond to cyberattacks against our critical
> infrastructure. While our election technology was not explicitly mentioned,
> our political process is certainly critical. And while they’re a hodgepodge
> of separate state-run systems, together their security affects every one of
> us. After everyone has voted, it is essential that both sides believe the
> election was fair and the results accurate. Otherwise, the election has no
> legitimacy.
>
> Election security is now a national security issue; federal officials need
> to take the lead, and they need to do it quickly.
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
> --
>
> --
>
> Susan Eustis
> President
> WinterGreen Research
> 6 Raymond Street
> Lexington, Massachusetts
> phone 781 863 5078
> cell     617 852 7876
>
>
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