FreePress: Ohio Passwords on Web - 'anyone' could rig votes for B*

[dzika]

Default settings in Mahoning County Ohio

Default settings in Mahoning County
by Richard Hayes Phillips, Ph.D.
December 23, 2004

-snip-
A disturbing story has been widely circulated that a vote for Bush
was the default choice in the software of electronic voting machines
in a number of states. By definition, “default” settings are built-
in by the manufacturer to make sure their programs work properly,
and can be changed by the user. Some examples of default settings
on a home computer are screen savers, type face, and screen resolution.

According an article by Ann Harrison, posted at
http://www.counterpunch.org/harrison12082004.html

in certain counties in Ohio, Florida, Pennsylvania, Texas, and New
Mexico where touch screen voting machines were used, there have been
complaints from voters who selected Kerry on the touch screen and
saw their votes change to Bush on a summary screen. In addition,
there was a specific problem with the Sequoia AVC Edge machine (not
used in Ohio) where voters actually saw preselected default choices
presented to them.

With touch screen machines, it is possible to set up a default
choice for Bush that would not be seen by the voters. Their votes
would be automatically cast for Bush unless they successfully
overrode the default choice of the computer. Likewise, if they
deliberately chose not to vote for president, their votes would be
counted for Bush.

Mahoning County was by far the largest county in Ohio where touch
screen voting machines were utilized. According to a report by the
Youngstown Vindicator at
http://www.vindy.com/basic/news/281829446390855.php

-snip-
Mahoning County utilized ES&S Ivotronic touch screen machines. The
administrative password for these machines was reported on the ES&S website itself.

By default, the password is 1111. According to
http://savethevote.com/issues/glitches.htm this password cannot be
modified easily, which would mean that anyone who knows the password
could change other default settings on the machines.


Link:
http://www.freepress.org/departments/display/19/2004/1018

EDIT: subject

[treading_water]

1. Oh. My. God.

This is unreal.

[dzika]

4. Didn't John Conyers say that

there doesn't have to be a conspiracy to have election fraud.

It seems to me that publishing the passwords and 'cheat sheets' could cue people to commit fraud.

Just give them the idea and the opportunity...

[Dancing_Dave]

8. They built into this scam a certain margin of deniability

And treacherously hid the fraud behind chaos.

It won't be easy to prove what Rove or Bush knew and when they knew it.

It could easily take as long to get the bottom of this as it took to get to the bottom of Watergate.

However, we don't need many criminal convictions of high officials to jump start a popular movement to clean up the elections!

[anamandujano]

12. "hid the fraud behind chaos"

This sums it up nicely.

Anyone trying to tell the story to the masses, if they ever managed to follow the maze correctly, would be scoffed at as if they were trying to pass off a fairy tale for reality. Kind of falls into "the bigger the lie, the more unbelievable" territory.

[faithnotgreed]

16. their theme, anamandujano, and the media responds the same each time

[Goldeneye]

18. I think Rove did himself in

"um...things just aren't matcing my calculations, I think were gonna win boss."...Rove knew ...

[Catherine Vincent]

2. You got to know there was fraud from this last election.

Too many electronic machines throughout the country had glitches that were to the advantage of Bush.

They have to continue to get to the bottom of it. Even if it last through the next presidential election.

[kk897]

23. Hi catgirl: that avatar pic is so sweet... is she one of the

"4 Little Girls"?

[Catherine Vincent]

26. That is me when I was a kid.

Thanks.

[kk897]

27. awwwww.... n/t

[rumpel]

3. wow.

[Brundle_Fly]

5. they hack is too easy.,...

you do NOT write an application in MS Access, if you want security.

You just Don't!

[JohnOneillsMemory]

6. Kick. I'm trying to laugh at the grotesque corruption at every turn...n/t

[KittyWampus]

20. Ha, I Say. Ha, Ha!

[merh]

7. Unbelievable . . .

At least they couldn't have used their birth dates. This bunch is unbelievable.

[rumpel]

9. I just checked my chart for CA

Counties that used Sequoia AVC Edge-1
all but one of counties that show fewer votes for Kerry than cast for Boxer compared with Bush vs Bill Jones ( for Boxer seat)
Early voting was done also on touchscreen in LA but vendor is not posted on LA County site.

Napa: Kerry O% Bush +9%
more reg. dems 45.95%

Riverside: Kerry -13% Bush +17%
more reg. rep 47.03%

San Bernardino: Kerry -11% Bush +21%
more reg. rep 42.69%

Santa Clara: Kerry -1% Bush +18%
more reg. dem 44.94%

Shasta: Kerry -10% Bush +13%
more reg rep 48.94%

Tehama: Kerry -10% Bush +13%
more reg rep 45.10%

based on data SS as of 12/5

do you see anything?

[dzika]

10. I notice that...

B* has a lot more +'s than Kerry does.

I'm a little tired. Maybe you could spell it out for me?

[rumpel]

11. B had more votes in all counties than the repub senator candidate,

while Kerry had less votes cast for him than for Boxer in 44 out of 58 counties. I find it hard to believe that Boxer voters would not vote for Kerry.
Also, B got from 99% to 113% of registered repub votes in these counties except one county which was 87%.
While Kerry hovers around 70% except in one county here where he got 106% of reg. dem votes.

actual chart is detailed just can not paste the whole chart....



I am also going to sign off for the night

[NVMojo]

29. this is what happened in NV, on the new Sequoias in rural

areas...

[Viva_La_Revolution]

21. here ya go....

F-R-A-U-D!!!!!

[IndyOp]

24. Really interesting - glad to see you are working on CA since there was

Definite evidence of fraud from Diebold in the 2003 elections.

Can you show us other non-touchscreen or non-AVC Edge-1 counties for comparison?

The comparison you have above - the Kerry/Boxer discrepancy is like the Kerry/Connally discrepancy in Ohio - we would expect Kerry to have gotten the same number or more votes than Boxer because he is higher up on the ticket.

Still some people will argue that voters often vote for Dems at the state/congress level, but want Repubs as Pres -- to offset each other, checks & balances.

The way to put a hole in that argument is to show that they voted as often for Kerry as for Boxer in non-touchscreen or non-AVC Edge-1 counties of similar size and similar population make-up (jobs, salaries, religion, age, ethnicities).

:kick:

[bleever]

25. People who voted for Boxer sometimes chose * over Kerry???

Is that really what your numbers suggest?

Cuz that did not happen. No way. Unh uh.

[rumpel]

31. Sorry, had to leave. I would like to post the chart.Even though

I have not updated since 12/5. Some totals were the final, some were updated, and the CA State site said they will no longer post updates until the 11th of Dec., and as of Monday they still had the 12/5 numbers which are not the absolute final.
But I thought it was quite interesting.
I will study how I can post my excel sheet, without screwing up the columns.

[The Judged]

13. Since they espouse the death penalty, it is only fitting that they get it.

For Treason.

[Carolab]

14. So, even if as Blackwell proposed

that a voter decided not to vote for either * or Kerry, * automatically got the vote? Kind of wrecks his stupid argument, doesn't it?

[suffragette]

15. disturbing

Snohomish County in Washington state used Sequoia machines too.
I distinctly remember seeing a couple people interviewed on local stations on Nov 2nd who said they voted for Kerry and Bush's name came up.
WA went for Kerry and we've been a bit busy here getting our votes for governor counted. I haven't heard it talked about here except those brief moments on Nov 2.
I wonder how widespread this is.

[njdemocrat106]

17. How come every single voting problem benefits Bush?

Hmmmmmm...

[fasttense]

19. Because you cheat to win n/t

[IndyPriest]

22. Oh, I'm sure they were just trying to help!

That's the line Rapp and Barbian of Triad have taken. Maybe all these vote machine folks had the same brain transplant....

[AirAmFan]

28. Election fraud needs to be reframed as 'HOMELAND CYBERSECURITY'

to remove the tinfoil hat most people now see on the heads of people who promote stories like this.

Reframing election fraud in cyberspace in this way would enlist support in the IT security community. What government data are more vital to a democracy than vote counts from an election?

I would surmise that some homeland security officials already have considered the issue of information security for election data. The whole issue of the cybersecurity of vital government information languishes in obscurity because it seems so theoretical, just like the idea, before 9/11, of a terrorist attack that would kill thousands

Ironically, Richard Clarke, who could not get as much visibility and funding for al-Qaeda counterterrorism as we needed, was shifted from that area to cybersecurity when Condi took over. Now cybersecurity has experienced ANOTHER 9/11, if this story is true.

The people who could actually do something to prevent future election fraud in cyberspace include Amit Yoran, the chief of DHS's cybersecurity operation who resigned in frustration after only a year.

From http://www.informationweek.com/showArticle.jhtml?articleID=49400205 :

"Homeland Security Cybersecurity Chief Abruptly Resigns

By George V. Hulme Oct. 1, 2004

The Department of Homeland Security's cybersecurity chief has confirmed to InformationWeek that he has submitted his resignation. Amit Yoran's resignation was effective at the end of the business day Thursday. Yoran accepted the position of director at the National Cyber Security Division in September 2003, a job previously held by special cyber-security advisers to the White House Howard Schmidt and Richard Clarke. ... His last post in the private sector was as an executive at Internet security firm Symantec Corp, which acquired the startup managed security services provider Riptech in July 2002 for $145 million. Yoran co-founded Riptech in 1998. ...

Yoran immediately began working to implement the National Strategy to Secure Cyberspace, the Bush administration's blueprint for Internet security in the public and private sectors. Some of the accomplishments of the National Cyber Security Division during the past year include the formation of US-CERT, the federal government cybersecurity information clearing house, and its cyberalerting system. "I've completed my year commitment and used my startup experience to successfully get good operational capacity under way at US-CERT," Yoran said in a phone interview with InformationWeek. Yoran says he hopes his successor will continue to build on the "base capability" at the NCSD that has been established in the past year. He also said there's a "high amount of enthusiasm" among government agencies and the private sector to increasingly collaborate on cybersecurity issues. "The key is to harness that enthusiasm going forward," he says. "I'm committed to helping the division as they move forward."

Many security technology executives cited frustration that Yoran's director position doesn't report directly to the White House and that cybersecurity hadn't been given high-enough priority by the Bush administration. Just last week it was proposed in the intelligence reform bill that responsibility for cybersecurity be moved from Homeland Security to the Office of Management and Budget. But the proposal was removed from the bill in last-minute political wrangling. Sources close to Yoran, who asked not to be named, say he was growing increasingly frustrated with the position's lack of authority and limited budget...."

[Danish Reporter]

30. Password way too weak

Dear DU'ers

Although the Diebold GEMS software is so weak that the initial password protection is a joke - just open the database in access, locate the operator-field and delete any encrypted strings you find and you're free to go - I decided to make a little experiment with copying the encrypted string from the Alameda County Primary Election 2002 and give it a run through a password-cracker. Just for the sports of it.

Well. The Alameda Primary was protected by a password hidden in the encrypted string 'hOfAGgAx4l0qU'.

The password-cracker John the Ripper located the password in split seconds: 'global'. I didn't even have time to lift my finger from the enter-key activating John the Ripper before the encrypted string was cracked and the password was found.

This is a joke. First and foremost, it's painfully obvious that password-strings shouldn't be accessible in any way. Period. Even then, to choose 'global' as a password sets aside even the most basic childhood IT-security learning.

It's too short. It's alphanumeric. It's in even the most basic dictionary files. It's so unbelievably vulnerable to the most basic hacker-attacks that who-ever chose it to protect an entire election should be spanked and sent to bed without supper.

Hell, my 11 year old daughter chooses better passwords for her Hotmail accounts than that.

Just my 2 cents.

Merry christmas everybody

Bo Elkjaer, Denmark