Georgia wipes suspected compromised voting data

[someoneyouknow]

Georgia narrowly went to the con artist in the presidential election, giving him its 16 electoral votes. Oddly, the server which stored the results of the state's vote-management system was wiped days after a lawsuit was filed by Georgia citizens who were asking for an independent, third-party review of the 15 year old system. The deletion of its filesystem data makes analysis of whether the system was compromised by Russia impossible to ascertain.

No hard copies of the votes are kept, making the electronic copy the only official record.

While investigating the Kennesaw State University's Center for Election Systems, which oversees Georgia's voting system, last year, security researcher Logan Lamb found its system was misconfigured, exposing the state's entire voter registration records, multiple PDFs with instructions and passwords for election workers, and the software systems used to tally votes cast.

"You could just go to the root of where they were hosting all the files and just download everything without logging in," he said. He also noted the files had been indexed by Google, making them readily available to anyone looking in the right place.

So far, everyone is claiming ignorance of the event. A spokesperson for Georgia’s secretary of state, Brian Kemp, who is in overall charge, denied having anything to do with the decision. And the election center's director, Michael Barnes, is refusing to comment.

Since the server was not under a court protection order, the destruction of its data is not illegal but it is extremely suspicious.

As for the information itself, there is one more avenue to recover it: the FBI took a copy of the server's filesystem contents when it opened an investigation into the system back in March. So far the Feds have refused to say whether they still have that copy.

https://www.theregister.co.uk/2017/10/26/voting_server_georgia_wiped/

http://www.chicagotribune.com/news/nationworld/politics/ct-georgia-election-server-wiped-20171026-story.html

https://www.pbs.org/newshour/politics/georgia-election-server-wiped-after-suit-filed

 

[Boxlicker101]

Are you sure this didn't actually happen in IL? Chicago, in particular, is notorious for this.

 

[John Blackhawk]

I really wish people would get off this insane Russian collusion idea. As for this voting thing allow me to blast two major holes.

Outside a country wide army of hackers i just don't see anyone hacking our voting system. I mean there's just not one place you could hack in to alter the entire system. I don't even want to hazard a guess as to how many systems there are involved or how many years it would take to affect enough system enough to affect an election.

Second typicially as i understand voting machines are programed and then disconnected from any outside system. And while yes you could i suppose alter the computers by hand there is no way to alter that may systems without someone noticing.

My point is there is no way to mess with a particular election unless you have precognition.

 

[domroger]

I really wish people would get off this insane Russian collusion idea. As for this voting thing allow me to blast two major holes.

Outside a country wide army of hackers i just don't see anyone hacking our voting system. I mean there's just not one place you could hack in to alter the entire system. I don't even want to hazard a guess as to how many systems there are involved or how many years it would take to affect enough system enough to affect an election.

Second typicially as i understand voting machines are programed and then disconnected from any outside system. And while yes you could i suppose alter the computers by hand there is no way to alter that may systems without someone noticing.

My point is there is no way to mess with a particular election unless you have precognition.

You don't have to hack all the states systems ,just the swing states .That would be enough to swing the election in the way wanted by the hackers .

 

[John Blackhawk]

You don't have to hack all the states systems ,just the swing states .That would be enough to swing the election in the way wanted by the hackers .

Ok fair enough, i didn't think about only attacking the swing states, But still i just don't see hacking into voting machines directly. And hacking each voting machine one by one isn't practical because someone would have noticed something.

 

[Hypoxia]

Ok fair enough, i didn't think about only attacking the swing states, But still i just don't see hacking into voting machines directly. And hacking each voting machine one by one isn't practical because someone would have noticed something.

Georgia narrowly went to the con artist in the presidential election, giving him its 16 electoral votes. Oddly, the server which stored the results of the state's vote-management system was wiped days after a lawsuit was filed by Georgia citizens who were asking for an independent, third-party review of the 15 year old system. The deletion of its filesystem data makes analysis of whether the system was compromised by Russia impossible to ascertain.

No hard copies of the votes are kept, making the electronic copy the only official record.

See, one needn't hack all the terminals (voting machines). Only the statewide server need be compromised. In this case it likely was corrupt local Gups, not Russian information troops.

As for "someone would have noticed something" -- I recall an animated editorial cartoon from the 2000 election. Here's someone at a Florida video voting machine, and every time they try to push GORE, the button moves around and ends up being BUSH. That's an exaggeration but people DID notice Florida voting machines acting funny; they complained; they were ignored.

"It's not who votes that counts, but who counts the votes." --J.Stalin

 

[John Blackhawk]

See, one needn't hack all the terminals (voting machines). Only the statewide server need be compromised. In this case it likely was corrupt local Gups, not Russian information troops.

As for "someone would have noticed something" -- I recall an animated editorial cartoon from the 2000 election. Here's someone at a Florida video voting machine, and every time they try to push GORE, the button moves around and ends up being BUSH. That's an exaggeration but people DID notice Florida voting machines acting funny; they complained; they were ignored.

"It's not who votes that counts, but who counts the votes." --J.Stalin

Fundamentally i agree if the voting data was hacked they would pick one point to attack, not multiple ones. Now i am no expert on security but i just don't see election data being put on a server that would even have the possibility of being hacked from the outside. Not to mention even the most basic of security precautions would be effective.

First do not transmit the data using any sort of electronic medium. Go with physical moving of the data after the election data cards have been collected and when the votes are counted.

Second any vote counting would have to take place on a computer "airgapped" i think the term is and have abolutely no network connection to the outside.

Now admittedly even this scenario has its weakness, in this case is someone physically accessing the cards while they're transported or the computer counting them.

 

[Hypoxia]

Now i am no expert on security but i just don't see election data being put on a server that would even have the possibility of being hacked from the outside.

Alas, more than a few voting systems have shown vulnerability to outside hacking. And the easy way involves no penetration; merely convince an insider to do the dirty deed. Call it social engineering. The impetus might be bribery, trickery, blackmail, conversion, whatever.

 

[sr71plt]

I really wish people would get off this insane Russian collusion idea. As for this voting thing allow me to blast two major holes.

And it would be nice if every Trump dupe/dope had his/her own fairy godmother too.

 

[John Blackhawk]

And it would be nice if every Trump dupe/dope had his/her own fairy godmother too.

I got one phrase to that "NO TAXATION WITHOUT REPRESENTATION!"

If you want to blame someone blame Obama because if he hadn't forced through Obamacare, HRC would have stood a chance of getting elected.

 

[someoneyouknow]

I got one phrase to that "NO TAXATION WITHOUT REPRESENTATION!"

If you want to blame someone blame Obama because if he hadn't forced through Obamacare, HRC would have stood a chance of getting elected.

If you didn't want Obamneycare then the Heritage Foundation shouldn't have come up with the idea of forcing people to hand over their to private industry, Newt Gingrich shouldn't have gone a nationwide tour touting the plan, and Mitt Romney shouldn't have implemented it. Had Mitt not forced the people of Massachusetts to hand over their money, Obamneycare would have failed.

 

[Hypoxia]

Since the server was not under a court protection order, the destruction of its data is not illegal but it is extremely suspicious.

I know nothing of relevant law here but I won't let that stop me.

Let's say I have administrative control of certain computer systems and their data. I learn, from whispers or media accounts pr however, that legal questions have been raised about that data. I am thus aware of possible police interest.

If I delete any or all of that data, even if it's not under a protective order, am I obstructing justice by destroying what I have reason to think will be considered evidence? Suppose I run a state election system, or the EPA, or Facebook. How much evidence can I wipe, and when?

 

[Boxlicker101]

I know nothing of relevant law here but I won't let that stop me.

Let's say I have administrative control of certain computer systems and their data. I learn, from whispers or media accounts pr however, that legal questions have been raised about that data. I am thus aware of possible police interest.

If I delete any or all of that data, even if it's not under a protective order, am I obstructing justice by destroying what I have reason to think will be considered evidence? Suppose I run a state election system, or the EPA, or Facebook. How much evidence can I wipe, and when?

This is one of several things charged against Hillary. The computer in her bathroom at home was being used to send and receive classified info, which was and is contrary to law. However, she very thoroughly deleted tens of thousands of emails in order to hide the evidence of her wrong-doing.

Perhaps this destruction of evidence is one of the things included in the Mueller indictment. We will know more tomorrow.

 

[DrDelirium]

I know nothing of relevant law here but I won't let that stop me.

Let's say I have administrative control of certain computer systems and their data. I learn, from whispers or media accounts pr however, that legal questions have been raised about that data. I am thus aware of possible police interest.

If I delete any or all of that data, even if it's not under a protective order, am I obstructing justice by destroying what I have reason to think will be considered evidence? Suppose I run a state election system, or the EPA, or Facebook. How much evidence can I wipe, and when?

Generally speaking, intentionally destroying evidence of a crime would be obstruction of justice. It's not always easy to prove, though. This is where playing dumb pays off.

Regarding hacking: several studies have shown that not only are digital voting machines easy to hack, most have been designed to be hacked. The trick is having access to them, since they aren't just hanging out on the internet posting on facebook as a rule. So, the first place to look for hacking is the people that have physical possession of them before an election.
Hacking the state server is dicey because there should be check sums to compare with each local machine, so it would be necessary either to arrange for nobody to ever examine the local machines, or to hack them anyway, to get them to agree with the state server. Simpler just to hack them. A few votes spread out over several low-interest precincts is hard to notice. Not necessary to hack all of them, just enough so spread the required number of votes out a bit.

 

[someoneyouknow]

UPDATE

In Federal court, Georgia is accused of intentionally destroying evidence that could show unauthorized access to the state election system and potential manipulation of election results.

In a court filing Thursday, they said state officials began destroying evidence within days of the suit's filing and continued to do so as the case moved forward. "The evidence strongly suggests that the State's amateurish protection of critical election infrastructure placed Georgia's election system at risk, and the State Defendants now appear to be desperate to cover-up the effects of their misfeasance — to the point of destroying evidence," the filing said.​

In their brief Thursday, lawyers for the Coalition for Good Governance accused state officials of destroying computer servers from the Center for Election Systems at Kennesaw State University after a security hole there that exposed Georgia voters' personal data and passwords used by county election officials was discovered. State lawyers then failed to ask the FBI for a copy of a forensic image the agency made of the server before it was wiped, despite saying they would, they said.

The brief also accuses state officials and their lawyers of deleting and overwriting data preserved on voting machine memories and on memory cards used to program the voting machines. "After abundant notice of their well-known duty to preserve evidence, the State Defendants did not simply neglect to disable some automated purge function in their IT systems. Rather, they intentionally and calculatingly destroyed evidence," the brief said. "Surely, to engage in conduct so odious that any junior lawyer would know it would expose them to sanctions, the evidence so disposed of must have been damning in the extreme."

It should be noted the current governor, Republican Brian Kemp, who narrowly defeated his Democratic challenger, was also Georgia's top election official at that time.

Georgia claims it has put in place a plan to address the numerous security flaws found in their voting system by an independent contractor, but that having paper ballots in the interim, would be "an impossible burden" on state and local election officials.

Apparently when you have 1,000 people in a district, printing two reams of paper ballots is a burden.

https://www.cbsnews.com/news/georgia-officials-accused-of-destroying-evidence-in-touchscreen-voting-machine-lawsuit/