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Can you elaborate on why you think this is relevant?

by blhack 6y ago

deleted 6y ago
[deleted]
leesalminen 6y ago
Can you elaborate on why you think this isn’t relevant? It seems plainly obvious to me how it’s relevant.
- thefreeman 6y ago
  Does the FTP server print out paper ballots which voters then review and manually scan in a machine? If not then it's totally irrelevant.
  - chrisco255 6y ago
    Dominion works off of dongles and file transfers. If you're curious about the DVS topology: https://www.sos.state.co.us/pubs/elections/VotingSystems/systemsDocumentation/DominionDocumentation.html https://www.sos.state.co.us/pubs/elections/VotingSystems/sys...
    - tw04 6y ago
      For early voting reports. Paper ballots are tallied for official results. A vulnerability in the FTP software, which I don't believe you've provided any proof was actually exploited in the wild during the elections, makes 0 difference to official results.
      - ficklepickle 6y ago
        They never claimed it was exploited in the wild nor that it affected the results of the 2020 US election .
        thefreeman 6y ago
        I mean that was obviously the implication of the original comment in this chain.
        hnlmorg 6y ago
        No, no it wasn't. Like the previous poster (ficklepickle), I didn't read that the OPs post to mean that either.
        tw04 6y ago
        Then what was the point of the comment?
        irscott 6y ago
        With all of the controversy (real or imagined) surrounding the recent elections I think the company who makes the voting machines having an open exploit like this is a bad look. No one is saying they were hacked this way but it definitely can be used as fodder to bolster election fraud claims (real or imagined.)
  - leesalminen 6y ago
    How do you think the tallied paper ballots get sent along after being scanned into a machine? FTP comes to mind...
    - blhack 6y ago
      They are physically transported to a central tabulation center on memory cards. The machines aren't connected to the internet.
      - leesalminen 6y ago
        Check out page 20 of this document [0] produced by Dominion. It clearly shows FTP being used to transfer tallied vote data from remote polling sites to central sites. Do you have any evidence to support your claim? [0] https://www.sos.state.co.us/pubs/elections/VotingSystems/systemsDocumentation/Dominion/2.02-DemocracySuite-SystemConfigurationOverview-4-19_redacted.pdf https://www.sos.state.co.us/pubs/elections/VotingSystems/sys...
korethr 6y ago
I will elaborate on why I think it's relevant. The election infrastructure for much of the country has the security of swiss cheese. And this isn't some new thing created from whole cloth by Trump supporters; people have been raising concern about this for years. Back when Obama was up for election, there were news articles about how election machines could potentially be tampered with to steal the election from Obama. When it was Trump vs Hillary, some were concerned the election would be stolen from Hillary, and when Trump was elected, insinuations and outright accusations were levied that Trump stole the election through, amongst other things, election machine tampering. And then in this most recent election cycle, we have the "Kraken", et. al., which appears to have, in-part, motivated the Capitol riot. Regardless of what you think of the of the truth of the accusations, whether in this election cycle, prior ones, or future ones, the fact that the underlying (lack-of) security lends a plausibility to such accusations is a problem unto itself. If elections have or are tampered with by malicious agents, foreign or domestic, we do not have free and fair elections, and that's a Big Problem. If demagogues can easily stir up popular sentiment that the elections are not free and fair, that's also a Big Problem. It is the lack of election security that amplifies those problems into big ones. Sure, we can go after entities that try to tamper with elections, and we would do well educate ourselves to be able to spot demagoguery and misinformation. But we would also do quite well to go after underlying problems that make the aforementioned problems worse.
- thefreeman 6y ago
  That's why the CISA had a huge emphasis on paper backups in the election. You can't hack a physical printout which the voter verifies themself before scanning.
  - ndiscussion 6y ago
    The QR code is scanned, not the text on the paper printout, as far as I understand
    - thefreeman 6y ago
      But the count can (and was in certain states) be verified with a hand recount of the paper ballots, which is not subject to digital interference.

Can you elaborate on why you think this is relevant?

by blhack 6y ago

Can you elaborate on why you think this is relevant?

deleted 6y ago

[deleted]

leesalminen 6y ago

Can you elaborate on why you think this isn’t relevant? It seems plainly obvious to me how it’s relevant.

thefreeman 6y ago
Does the FTP server print out paper ballots which voters then review and manually scan in a machine? If not then it's totally irrelevant.
- chrisco255 6y ago
  Dominion works off of dongles and file transfers. If you're curious about the DVS topology: https://www.sos.state.co.us/pubs/elections/VotingSystems/systemsDocumentation/DominionDocumentation.html https://www.sos.state.co.us/pubs/elections/VotingSystems/sys...
  - tw04 6y ago
    For early voting reports. Paper ballots are tallied for official results. A vulnerability in the FTP software, which I don't believe you've provided any proof was actually exploited in the wild during the elections, makes 0 difference to official results.
    - ficklepickle 6y ago
      They never claimed it was exploited in the wild nor that it affected the results of the 2020 US election .
      - thefreeman 6y ago
        I mean that was obviously the implication of the original comment in this chain.
        hnlmorg 6y ago
        No, no it wasn't. Like the previous poster (ficklepickle), I didn't read that the OPs post to mean that either.
      - tw04 6y ago
        Then what was the point of the comment?
        irscott 6y ago
        With all of the controversy (real or imagined) surrounding the recent elections I think the company who makes the voting machines having an open exploit like this is a bad look. No one is saying they were hacked this way but it definitely can be used as fodder to bolster election fraud claims (real or imagined.)
- leesalminen 6y ago
  How do you think the tallied paper ballots get sent along after being scanned into a machine? FTP comes to mind...
  - blhack 6y ago
    They are physically transported to a central tabulation center on memory cards. The machines aren't connected to the internet.
    - leesalminen 6y ago
      Check out page 20 of this document [0] produced by Dominion. It clearly shows FTP being used to transfer tallied vote data from remote polling sites to central sites. Do you have any evidence to support your claim? [0] https://www.sos.state.co.us/pubs/elections/VotingSystems/systemsDocumentation/Dominion/2.02-DemocracySuite-SystemConfigurationOverview-4-19_redacted.pdf https://www.sos.state.co.us/pubs/elections/VotingSystems/sys...

korethr 6y ago

I will elaborate on why I think it's relevant. The election infrastructure for much of the country has the security of swiss cheese. And this isn't some new thing created from whole cloth by Trump supporters; people have been raising concern about this for years. Back when Obama was up for election, there were news articles about how election machines could potentially be tampered with to steal the election from Obama. When it was Trump vs Hillary, some were concerned the election would be stolen from Hillary, and when Trump was elected, insinuations and outright accusations were levied that Trump stole the election through, amongst other things, election machine tampering. And then in this most recent election cycle, we have the "Kraken", et. al., which appears to have, in-part, motivated the Capitol riot. Regardless of what you think of the of the truth of the accusations, whether in this election cycle, prior ones, or future ones, the fact that the underlying (lack-of) security lends a plausibility to such accusations is a problem unto itself. If elections have or are tampered with by malicious agents, foreign or domestic, we do not have free and fair elections, and that's a Big Problem. If demagogues can easily stir up popular sentiment that the elections are not free and fair, that's also a Big Problem. It is the lack of election security that amplifies those problems into big ones. Sure, we can go after entities that try to tamper with elections, and we would do well educate ourselves to be able to spot demagoguery and misinformation. But we would also do quite well to go after underlying problems that make the aforementioned problems worse.

thefreeman 6y ago
That's why the CISA had a huge emphasis on paper backups in the election. You can't hack a physical printout which the voter verifies themself before scanning.
- ndiscussion 6y ago
  The QR code is scanned, not the text on the paper printout, as far as I understand
  - thefreeman 6y ago
    But the count can (and was in certain states) be verified with a hand recount of the paper ballots, which is not subject to digital interference.