BBV - Translating the Diebold memos

[Kelvin Mace]

Inside sources at Diebold have provided internal emails proving that the company was well aware of the security problems, as was Ciber, the independent testing athority (ITA).

These emails were written Oct 16-18, 2001.

To: "support"
Subject: alteration of Audit Log in Access
From: "Nel Finberg"

Jennifer Price at Metamor (about to be Ciber) has indicated that she can access the GEMS Access database and alter the Audit log without entering a password. What is the position of our development staff on this issue? Can we justify this? Or should this be anathema?

Nel

"Can we justify this? Or should this be anathema?"

Doesn't that say it all about the ethics of American corporations? The woman is writing to her masters to ask them what position they will be taking on an elementary question of right and wrong. Notice she doesn't say, "This is wrong and we must fix it to make our product secure." She simply asks what her moral position should be.


To: "support"
Subject: RE: alteration of Audit Log in Access
From: "Ken Clark"

Its a tough question, and it has a lot to do with perception. Of course everyone knows perception is reality.

Oh, don't you just know someone's going to embrace the Dark Side of the Force when they begin a discussion of right and wrong this way?

Right now you can open GEMS' .mdb file with MS-Access, and alter its contents. That includes the audit log. This isn't anything new.

Reeeaally? How interesting.

In VTS, you can open the database with progress and do the same. The same would go for anyone else's system using whatever database they are using. Hard drives are read-write entities. You can change their contents.

For those of you not paying complete attention, let me amplify this statement:

"Hard drives are read-write entities. You can change their contents."


And there, my friends, you have in a nutshell, the reason we should not allow these systems if they are not producing a paper ballot.

This reason brought to you by Diebold, the makers of crappy voting machines.

Now, where the perception comes in is that its right now very *easy* to change the contents. Double click the .mdb file. Even technical wizards at Metamor (or Ciber, or whatever) can figure that one out.

Admission that it is EASY to do.

It is possible to put a secret password on the .mdb file to prevent Metamor from opening it with Access. I've threatened to put a password on the .mdb before when dealers/customers/support have done stupid things with the GEMS database structure using Access. Being able to end-run the database has admittedly got people out of a bind though.

We could fix it, but we haven't, because it is allows us to "fix" other problems.

Jane (I think it was Jane) did some fancy footwork on the .mdb file in Gaston recently.

Hmm... Don't you just want to know what that "fancy footwork" was?

I know our dealers do it. King County is famous for it. That's why we've never put a password on the file before.

So, to facilitate "fixing" problems in elections, we are not going to close a huge security whole.

Note however that even if we put a password on the file, it doesn't really prove much. Someone has to know the password, else how would GEMS open it. So this technically brings us back to square one: the audit log is modifiable by that person at least (read, me). Back to perception though, if you don't bring this up you might skate through Metamor.

Translation: See if you can decieve the ITA by omission.

There might be some clever crypto techniques to make it even harder to change the log (for me, they guy with the password that is). We're talking big changes here though, and at the moment largely theoretical ones. I'd doubt that any of our competitors are that clever.

They're just worried about our competitors exploiting the hole?

By the way, all of this is why Texas gets its sh*t in a knot over the log printer. Log printers are not read-write, so you don't have the problem. Of course if I were Texas I would be more worried about modifications to our electronic ballots than to our electron logs, but that is another story I guess.

"Of course if I were Texas I would be more worried about modifications to our electronic ballots than to our electron logs, but that is another story I guess."

Gee, when we voters express this concern, we are called "alarmists" or <a href="http://www.thoughtcrimes.org/mt/archives/001002.html">"activists... who don't know what they are looking at."</a>

Bottom line on Metamor is to find out what it is going to take to make them happy. You can try the old standard of the NT password gains access to the operating system, and that after that point all bets are off. You have to trust the person with the NT password at least. This is all about Florida, and we have had VTS certified in Florida under the status quo for nearly ten years.

Translation: We've had this security hole for TEN YEARS

I sense a loosing battle here though. The changes to put a password on the .mdb file are not trivial and probably not even backward compatible, but we'll do it if that is what it is going to take.

Ken

Translation: We'll do it when someone makes us.

To: "support"
Subject: RE: alteration of Audit Log in Access
From: "Nel Finberg"

Thanks for the response, Ken. For now Metamor accepts the requirement to restrict the server password to authorized staff in the jurisdiction, and that it should be the responsibility of the jurisdiction to restrict knowledge of this password. So no action is necessary in this matter, at this time.

Nel

Translation: I followed your advice and "skated" by.

Can any one read these emails and not see that our demoicracy is in peril in the hands of these people?

David Allen
Publisher, CEO, Janitor
Plan Nine Publishing
1237 Elon Place
High Point, NC 27263
http://www.plan9.org

[DEMActivist]

1. Wouldn't you love to be a fly on the wall when...

the authorities ask Jane to define "fancy footwork?"

[angka]

2. this is some enormously damaging shit right here.

this is more than your average 'drip'

[Andy_Stephenson]

9. To be sure.....

it is a flood! The dike has a big ol hole in it and the Dutch Boy packed up and went home on this one.

[papau]

3. Why doesn't some lawyer have a class action for damage due to fraud?

Seems like an open and shut case.

Indeed the DA, any DA, should inforce the law in favor of the people and take down Diebold on criminal charges.

You guys are doing God's work!

:-)

[TacticalPeek]

4. "skate through Metamor"

"Of course if I were Texas I would be more worried about modifications to our electronic ballots than to our electron logs" (electron logs, heehee, thats what they are, for sure!)

I wonder how Metamor and Texas feel about being public chumps?:silly:

[ParanoidPat]

5. As Dem and Bev nailed it some time ago....

.....It's not a bug, It's a FEATURE! :evilgrin:

Now go hire a PR firm STAT! We have to change the public perception!
OH, wait, we already did that! x(

[Bushfire]

7. What an aide of Rush Holt told me

"everyone in Congress knows of this problem. they gristle when they hear the name Bev Harris."

Can you imagine the most powerful people in your country knowing your name, and the majority won't take your calls for help on this issue? That is what we are up against. This could be a campaign issue for those campaigning against incumbents who don't get on board HR2239.

[BevHarris]

17. Jim McDermott took the time. When he learned that

I had an appointment with his staff for Monday, he asked if I could reschedule so he could be there. Just finished the meeting. RedEagle also came, and let me tell you, she's dynamite!

One of the things they've been sold on is that we have all the Secretary of States overseeing this for us, so how could it be so easy to tamper with it?

RedEagle gave him a quick primer on The Election Center, and I provided him with the onceover on how much we've ALREADY found in the memos. There's much more that we've shown so far.

We also provided them with Eloriel's Word Document which gives the quick story from start to finish on one front-to-back page.

Next step: Civil rights attorney, file for an injunction.

Bev

[seemslikeadream]

18. Jim McDermontt!!!!!!

So great to hear this.

[hedda_foil]

22. Bev ... I was able to get a personal appointment w/ Schakowsky for Monday

That's two!

[eridani]

29. THE Bev Harris! Wow!

Glad McDermott is taking this seriously. I have gotten the local Kucinich campaign people interested in the issue. The WA Secretary of State's web page has a very creepy feel-good trust in electronic voting. I wrote him the following letter (Haven't heard back yet.)

Do you have a local WA state organization backing the suit? Put me on your list. [e-mail]

September 3, 2003

Office of the Secretary of State
Elections Division
PO Box 40229
Olympia, WA 98504-0299

Dear Messrs. Reed and Logan:

I have downloaded your online publication The Electronic Vote from your website, and am seriously disturbed by your unwarranted faith in the security of electronic voting. "Electronic voting improves security, reduces the number of voter mistakes, and helps insure every citizen the right to a secret ballot," says Mr. Reed. I suppose two out of three isn't bad, but many computer experts have been calling for a paper trail as validation of the voting process for some time now.

The California report you cite (which dismissed the need for a paper trail) has had substantial objections raised to its conclusions by a number of computer security experts. And if you don't set store by the opinions of the following people, I'd like to ask you if you'd continue to shop at a store which would not give you a paper tape listing your purchases, but asked you to trust their computer alone to arrive at the correct total. I certainly wouldn't, and I don't think my vote should be treated that cavalierly either.

http://www.bayarea.com/mld/mercurynews/business/6344554.htm

I believe Bruce Schneier, founder and chief technology officer of Counterpane Internet Security in San Jose, who says he's ``terrified'' about the prospect of voting with the current lineup of paperless DRE machines. ``Building technology that allows people to untraceably rig the vote seems like a bad idea,'' he says in the understatement of the year.

I believe Ed Felten, computer science professor at Princeton University, who calls these machines ``black boxes'' -- opaque to scrutiny and potentially subject, as Schneier notes, to tampering.

I believe David Dill, a Stanford University computer science professor who has worked hard to bring this issue to public attention. Visit his Verified Voting Web site (www.verifiedvoting.org) for much more information.

I am particularly concerned by software companies which are privately owned by political partisans, which also refuse to make their code public. The worst offender by far is Diebold. You claim that it would be difficult for outsiders to tamper with the vote. Difficult, but not impossible. And you completely overlook the possibility that tampering capacity can be built into the software in the first place.

http://www.scoop.co.nz/mason/stories/HL0307/S00065.htm

When asked to comment on allegations by Bev Harris that the Diebold software may have been designed to facilitate fraud, Rubin described the claim as "ludicrous. "Rubin could dismiss the allegation of deliberately fraudulent design in Diebold software, because his team never examined the Diebold software in question. Incredibly, this software keeps not one, but two Microsoft Access data tables of voting results. It's like a business keeping two sets of account books. The two tables are notionally identical copies of the votes collated from all polling stations. The software uses the first table for on-demand reports which might uncover alteration of the data --such as spot checks of results from individual polling stations. The second of the two tables is the one used to determine the election result. But the second table can be hacked and altered to produce fake election totals without affecting spot check reports derived from the first table."


(over)
Electronic voting, page 2

What might those two sets of Enron-style tables be used for? The head of a voting machine company has stated that he will deliver Ohio's votes to his preferred candidate, and his machines have the capacity to do just that.

http://www.cleveland.com/election/index.ssf?/base/news/106207171078040.xml

Columbus - The head of a company vying to sell voting machines in Ohio told Republicans in a recent fund-raising letter that he is "committed to helping Ohio deliver its electoral votes to the president next year."

The Aug. 14 letter from Walden O'Dell, chief executive of Diebold Inc. - who has become active in the re-election effort of President Bush - prompted Democrats this week to question the propriety of allowing O'Dell's company to calculate votes in the 2004 presidential election.

Diebold has already been caught at electoral hanky-panky in 2002, with no attempt by anyone to set matters right.

http://www.americanfreepress.net/08_25_03/Concerns_Over/concerns_over.html

Georgia is perhaps "hardest hit by the growing Diebold scandal," said Bev Harris, author of Black Box Voting: Ballot-Tampering in the 21st Century. On election night 2002, 67 memory cards with thousands of votes went missing in Fulton County, Harris reports. The loss of memory cards is comparable to lost ballot boxes.

Right before the election in Georgia, an unexamined program 'patch' was hastily installed on the 22,000 Diebold voting machines across the state. A patch inserts a 'program fix' into the existing code.

One of the folders found on the Diebold ftp site was one named 'rob-georgia.' This folder contained patch files that instructed the computer to replace the existing GEMS program with another. AFP has confirmed that the Diebold code used in Georgia was not inspected prior to the 2002 election.

As a voter, I demand the following safeguards for any electronic system that my tax dollars buy:

* random inspection of computer voting machines after the election,
* publication of the software code, and
* paper 'receipts' given to each voter to inspect upon completion of his voting, to be then deposited in a 'backup' ballot box.

This is not impossible or too expensive. If necessary, we can just import the Australian system.

http://www.elections.act.gov.au/EVACS.html

Here's Australia's system. The project was run by the government, with a contractor writing the actual open-source code for the system in less than six months for under $150,000. They have printers, audit trails, publicly inspected software and hardware, and the system is thoroughly tested.

Sincerely,

[Eloriel]

30. EXCELLENT!

And welcome to DU!

Eloriel

[Kelvin Mace]

33. CRITICALLY IMPORTANT! Not a paper receipt,, a paper ballot.

Please, this is very important.

1) If you say "reciept" they will bring up the "selling your vote" objection.

2) Receipts have no NO LEGAL STANDING. Only ballots are recognized by the courts.

David Allen
Publisher, CEO, Janitor
Plan Nine Publishing
1237 Elon Place
High Point, NC 27263
http://www.plan9.org

[TacticalPeek]

34. Key point!

Although eridani's mention sounds like it would really be a 'backup ballot', eschewing the true 'receipt' bait is very important.

:kick:

[RedEagle]

35. Welcome and about WA state.....

Eridani,

The operative mode for Reed, Logan, and Elliot is to pretty much ignore complaints, repeat continually the false information on paper ballots from The Election Center, and to say that mandating voter verified paper ballots is the legislature's responsibility.

They will only pay lip service to your concerns.

The best thing you can do is to continually educate the WA legislature on the issue and fight the influence the SOS has over them.

Most of these people don't know anything about voting machines and follow the lead of a few people who they think do.

While you and I might get mad about that, take a look at what this legislature, which only meets part of the year, had to deal with. They don't have time to become informed on everything.

Well, now is their down time and they are beginning to form up committees for the next session. EDUCATE THEM NOW!

Ditto for the governor's office.

Oh, one of the best things to do, is to let your county auditors know what you want, attend their meetings, and get on committess to select the equipment. Reed says auditors can pick what they want, but they are limited to what his office certifies.

Washington has a prior use rule that needs to go, but watch for the SOS office to introduce legislation that will do that but also much, much worse stuff.

The SOS office tried to past legislation last year that would have made only a cast vote record (not a ballot) adequate and would have given way to much discretion to the SOS to yay or nay equipment. Like, if he thought it was OK, not even certification would be required. WA laws are too lax on that point now.

Remind Reed he is an elected official and he better pay attention to what the public wants.

However, people like Logan and Elliot are not. Logan recently became King County's head of Elections and I imagine that was not an accident. Two King County Council members though, are wanting to make that position subject to election, like other county auditors. Those are Republicans doing that, too. Write objections to Logan's appointment, as he's part of this whole mess. WA certified the optical scan Diebold's under Munro and I'll have to recheck on the touch screens, that could have been Reed.

Why is Washington so gung ho about Internet Voting?

Hello, VoteHere is based up in Bellevue and Ralph Munro, former WA SOS is on the board of directors. According to Dan Spillane, Munro had a lot of involvement back when the voting system standards were being written. Munro also took along to VH the guy who had been his Director of Elections, whose complete name escapes me now, Gary ____? who was also quite involved in NASED.

Reed, according to several people, was prepped for the job by Munro and came from the same county as Munro, as did the Gary guy mentioned above.

The possible connections to VoteHere are a bit suspect, to say the least. And they use the excuse that WA is the Microsoft state to imply that we must be technological leaders.

[Nederland]

6. Kinda scary

For those of you not paying complete attention, let me amplify this statement:

"Hard drives are read-write entities. You can change their contents."


What rather scary is that this guy acts as if that is an irreconcilable problem. He doesn't realize that methods for compensating for this fact have been available for over thirty years. Banks have been using methods that digitally sign data to protect it from corruption for years. If only Diebold took protecting our votes as seriously as banks took protecting our money...

Diebold obviously needs to get better people.

[ParanoidPat]

10. At least ONE person who knows something about....

.....CD/R's! They could, with very little effort, add a CD/R that would keep a 'screen shot' of every vote that once written can't be changed or deleted! That, in addition to a printed paper ballot, would go a long way towards making the machines safer. The CD drive could also be used to load the election program code ensuring that the program is not altered during the election. :evilgrin:

[angka]

8. there is a tacit acknowledgement underlying this whole dialogue.

"Of course if I were Texas I would be more worried about modifications to our electronic ballots than to our electron logs, but that is another story I guess."

read it again. my eyes are bugging out of their sockets at the explosive nature of this. if there's any justice at all...

[Kelvin Mace]

15. It comes down to four things:

1) They knew the problem was there.
2) The didn't correct the problem.
3) They used the problem as a tool to "fix" things.
4) The ITA knew about it, and passed the spoftware anyway.

David Allen
Publisher, CEO, Janitor
Plan Nine Publishing
1237 Elon Place
High Point, NC 27263
http://www.plan9.org

[shirlden]

11. Keep kicking

for the night shift.

:kick:

[Kelvin Mace]

12. A cute email from a few days ago...

Dear David--

For your information and reading pleasure...

http://www.gazette.net/200336/weekend/a_section/176729-1.html

Regards,

Joseph Richardson
Diebold, Incorporated
330.490.5562
[e-mail]

---------------------------------------------------------------

To which I responded today:



Dear Joseph--

For *your* information and reading pleasure...

http://www.scoop.co.nz/mason/stories/HL0309/S00106.htm

David Allen
Publisher, CEO, Janitor
Plan Nine Publishing
1237 Elon Place
High Point, NC 27263
http://www.plan9.org

[ParanoidPat]

14. How you say? ummm, ummm, OOPS!

Open mouth, insert foot! LOL! :evilgrin:
Thanks David! Made my day! :)

[BevHarris]

19. HAH! This is my favorite post of the day. Thanks, David!

Yes, I know, don't remind me.

[Kelvin Mace]

20. *snort*

Lex and I are dancing with joy, and banging our heads on the desk. <g>

David Allen
Publisher, CEO, Janitor
Plan Nine Publishing
1237 Elon Place
High Point, NC 27263
http://www.plan9.org

[Eloriel]

28. OMG. I can't remember when I last laughed so hard

You talk about your boomerang!

Bet he'll think twice about sending you any further "take that" email!

ROTFLMAO

Eloriel

[seemslikeadream]

13. CIBER systems crashes on NYSE Mr. Southworth?

Just reposting this in case it was missed.

1:38pm 09/08/03 CIBER top percentage NYSE decliner, off 11.3% CBS MarketWatch.com

10:12am 09/08/03
CIBER tumbles on poor Q3 outlook (CBR) By Michael Baron
New York (CBS.MW) -- CIBER (CBR) shares lost more than 15 percent to $9.13 after the Greenwood Village, Colo., provider of systems intergration consulting services forecast $175 million to $177 million in revenue and earnings per share of 7 to 9 cents for the third quarter. Analysts polled by Thomson First Call were looking for earnings of 10 cents per share on revenue of about 179 million. The company also cut about 140 jobs in its software consulting operations as an unidentified telecommunications company reduced its business with Ciber.

It was posted by Dan Spillane on Mon Sep-08-03

[TacticalPeek]

16. Kick KKKarl.

:dem:

[never cry wolf]

21. Bounce to the top of the page

:bounce:

[hedda_foil]

23. Get back on page one!

[Vadem]

25. kick

:kick:

[Gordon25]

24. Pardon my sneezes...

...it's that smell of burnt gunpowder that suddenly seems to be everywhere.

Gordon25

[PATRICK]

26. and under the radar

Meanwhile back among the Democratic stump burners, there is a debate about internet voting in the Michigan primary, effectively giving a seal of dumb approval to an even more questionable, unsecure and invisible form of voting. Sharpton only comesup with the racial divide argument- as valid as it is in this poison brew?

SERVE has bulldozed ahead above objections for a "test run" in 2004 of 100,000 online votes spread out over many states mostly according to the presence of military stations it seems to me.

Isn't there any computer geek or amateur that can wake these tech dumb pols of ours up? At least when they invented gunpowder it made a noise and flash. This is the slick silent death of the vote.

Great files. How much will it take to arouse anything in the legal system in the states that care?

[Kelvin Mace]

27. Actually...

I wrote a chapter in Bev's book on that very topic.<g>

David Allen
Publisher, CEO, Janitor
Plan Nine Publishing
1237 Elon Place
High Point, NC 27263
http://www.plan9.org

[WaterDog]

31. I can just

:kick: Kick :kick: Kick :kick: Kick

[dusty64]

32. Kick.

:kick: