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We had submissions by two Soylentils about the wiping of drives on a voting server in Georgia (USA).
Georgia Election Server Wiped after Lawsuit Filed
A computer server crucial to a lawsuit against Georgia election officials was quietly wiped clean by its custodians just after the suit was filed, The Associated Press has learned.
The server’s data was destroyed July 7 by technicians at the Center for Elections Systems at Kennesaw State University, which runs the state’s election system. The data wipe was revealed in an email — sent last week from an assistant state attorney general to plaintiffs in the case — that was obtained by the AP. More emails obtained in a public records request confirmed the wipe.
The lawsuit, filed by a diverse group of election reform advocates, aims to force Georgia to retire its antiquated and heavily criticized election technology. The server in question, which served as a statewide staging location for key election-related data, made national headlines in June after a security expert disclosed a gaping security hole that wasn’t fixed six months after he reported it to election authorities.
[...] It’s not clear who ordered the server’s data irretrievably erased.
The Kennesaw election center answers to Georgia’s secretary of state, Brian Kemp, a Republican who is running for governor in 2018 and is the main defendant in the suit. A spokeswoman for the secretary of state’s office said Wednesday that “we did not have anything to do with this decision,” adding that the office also had no advance warning of the move.
[...] Plaintiffs in the lawsuit, mostly Georgia voters, want to scrap the state's 15-year-old vote-management system — particularly its 27,000 AccuVote touchscreen voting machines, hackable devices that don't use paper ballots or keep hardcopy proof of voter intent. The plaintiffs were counting on an independent security review of the Kennesaw server, which held elections staging data for counties, to demonstrate the system's unreliability.
Wiping the server "forestalls any forensic investigation at all," said Richard DeMillo, a Georgia Tech computer scientist following the case. "People who have nothing to hide don't behave this way."
[...] It could still be possible to recover relevant information from the server.
The FBI is known to have made an exact data image of the server in March when it investigated the security hole. The Oct. 18 email disclosing the server wipe said the state attorney general's office was "reaching out to the FBI to determine whether they still have the image" and also disclosed that two backup servers were wiped clean Aug. 9, just as the lawsuit moved to federal court.
On Wednesday, the attorney general's office notified the court of its intent to subpoena the FBI seeking the image.
Atlanta FBI spokesman Stephen Emmett would not say if that image still exists. Nor would he say whether agents examined it to determine whether the server's files might have been altered by unauthorized users.
Georgia, USA, Election Server Wiped Just After Lawsuit Filed
The Center for Elections Systems at Kennesaw State University, which runs the US state of Georgia's election system wiped a server crucial to a lawsuit regarding the integrity of the most recent national election. The lawsuit was filed on July 3rd and 7th. Wiping the server has forestalled any potential foresnic investigations, and no one is saying yet who ordered the erasure. The lawsuit argued that the server had been quite insecure and probably compromised. However, without evidence to examine, this cannot be determined. This follows on the confirmation last year, prior to being blocked by the GOP, of the physical inability of Michigan, Pennsylvania, and Wisconsin to audit the ballots.
Also at: C|net, The Register, Mercury News, and Ars Technica.
(Score: 5, Informative) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday October 28 2017, @07:33AM (9 children)
From the bottom of the Ars Technica article: [arstechnica.com]
"While the server was in the possession of the Bureau, a forensic image or copy of all the data on the server was made and held by the agency. Following the notification from the FBI that no data was compromised...the drives on the server were erased and the server made available for alternative uses."
"...the data and information that was on the server in question has been and is still in the possession of the FBI and will remain available to the parties"
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday October 28 2017, @09:08AM (1 child)
(Score: 3, Touché) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday October 28 2017, @10:35AM
No they didn't. Trump said so and he is the absolute best Sysadmin ever. Just ask him.
(Score: 2) by Runaway1956 on Saturday October 28 2017, @09:08AM (3 children)
Ahhh, that little bit makes all the difference in the world. The data is still there thanks to the magic of disk imaging. Up until I read that, all I could think was, "Wonder how they wiped it? How many passes, with whatever?"
(Score: 4, Funny) by Gaaark on Saturday October 28 2017, @12:48PM (2 children)
"Wonder how they wiped it?"
With a cloth, obviously.
--- Please remind me if I haven't been civil to you: I'm channeling MDC. ---Gaaark 2.0 ---
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday October 28 2017, @01:09PM (1 child)
"Wonder how they wiped it?"
Actually you get your best wipes with Charmin.
(Score: 1, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday October 28 2017, @02:49PM
But you need to spray "Data-B-Gone"(tm) before you use the Charmin.
(Score: 5, Informative) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday October 28 2017, @11:57AM (1 child)
Yet, it really is that bad. Let's reconstruct the timeline, shall we?
So, the server in question had been part of a prior data breach, in which the FBI got involved.
But it is uncertain whether that image still exists (of course it does). But that is moot, since the current case data would not have been on that March 2017 image:
The server, that was known compromised in March 2017, was used for the June 2017 elections anyway.
The case challenging the June election was files two weeks after the elections...
...yet a full month after explicitly being made aware of the case, they wiped it.
This should be a clear case of destruction of evidence, and in my opinion, given the known ties between the server operators and the election winner, should be enough ground to nullify the election.
(Score: 3, Interesting) by Fnord666 on Saturday October 28 2017, @02:55PM
It should be grounds for some people spending a few years in PMITA federal prison!
(Score: 3, Touché) by bzipitidoo on Saturday October 28 2017, @12:14PM
> "... server made available for alternative uses"
Because servers are sooo expensive even a state with a population of ten million can't afford to simply buy a new one so that data of great interest can be kept! Got to balance that budget, and reduce government waste.