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.
Related Stories
The project Protect Democracy is suing the state of South Carolina because its insecure, unreliable voting systems are effectively denying people the right to vote. The project has filed a 45-page lawsuit pointing out the inherent lack of security and inauditability of these systems and concludes that "by failing to provide S.C. voters with a system that can record their votes reliably," South Carolinians have been deprived of their constitutional right to vote. Late last year, Def Con 25's Voting Village reported on the ongoing, egregious, and fraudulent state of electronic voting in the US, a situation which has been getting steadily worse since at least 2000. The elephant in the room is that these machines are built from the ground up on Microsoft products, which is protected with a cult-like vigor standing in the way of rolling back to the only known secure method, hand counted paper ballots.
Bruce Schneier is an advisor to Protect Democracy
Earlier on SN:
Top Voting Machine Vendor Admits It Installed Remote-Access Software on Systems Sold to States (2018)
Want to Hack a Voting Machine? Hack the Voting Machine Vendor First (2018)
Georgia Election Server Wiped after Lawsuit Filed (2017)
It Took DEF CON Hackers Minutes to Pwn These US Voting Machines (2017)
Russian Hackers [sic] Penetrated US Electoral Systems and Tried to Delete Voter Registration Data (2017)
5 Ways to Improve Voting Security in the U.S. (2016)
FBI Says Foreign Hackers Penetrated State Election Systems (2016)
and so on ...
(Score: 3, Funny) by realDonaldTrump on Saturday October 28 2017, @07:03AM (3 children)
While Russia, China, other countries, outside groups and people are consistently trying to break through the cyber infrastructure of our governmental institutions, businesses and organizations including the Democrat National Committee, there was absolutely no effect on the outcome of the election including the fact that there was no tampering whatsoever with voting machines. There were attempts to hack the Republican National Committee, but the RNC had strong hacking defenses and the hackers were unsuccessful.
(Score: 1, Funny) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday October 28 2017, @07:58AM
Good to see Hillary's SysAdmin found new employment.
(Score: 5, Insightful) by bradley13 on Saturday October 28 2017, @08:16AM (1 child)
Likely even true. That said, wiping a server when it is the subject of legal action - and then deleting the backups a couple of weeks later - is very likely criminal. Whoever performed the action and especially whoever ordered it, needs to be identified and prosecuted.
It will be interesting to see how much effort is made to identify them.
Everyone is somebody else's weirdo.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday October 29 2017, @12:47AM
(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.
(Score: 5, Informative) by MichaelDavidCrawford on Saturday October 28 2017, @08:10AM (2 children)
SPOLIATION OF EVIDENCE MOTHERFUCKER DO YOU SPEAK IT?
The court case can proceed without the forensic evidence, because the judge will issue "Spoliation Instructions" to the jury, in which he explains that each party to a lawsuit is required to preserve any evidence that has bearing on the case. This is the civil lawsuit counterpart to criminal destruction of evidence.
Once the complaint had been served, both parties had fiduciary duties to ensure the preservation of evidence.
Yes I Have No Bananas. [gofundme.com]
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday October 28 2017, @09:10PM (1 child)
I'd plus one you if I could.
You channeled your inner Jules Winnfield in a manner that I approve for programmers and general representatives of knowledge in general.
(Score: 2) by MichaelDavidCrawford on Saturday October 28 2017, @10:48PM
You made me smile
Yes I Have No Bananas. [gofundme.com]
(Score: 0, Informative) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday October 28 2017, @08:39AM (4 children)
Over in New Hampshire, a senator got elected by about an order of magnitude fewer votes than were fraudulent. It appears that the votes are from Massachusetts residents who mostly took advantage of same-day registration. The result is an extra democrat, tipping the balance of power for our nation. This has caused numerous laws and appointments to fail in the senate.
Many counties in California had more votes than registered voters. Of those, just 1 went for Trump. This probably just affects bragging rights over the meaningless popular vote.
Broward county in Florida purposely delayed until it was clear that no reasonable amount of fraud would give Hillary a win. Broward is in the eastern time zone, yet did not report results until the panhandle (central time zone) made it clear that Trump would take the state.
(Score: 2) by Runaway1956 on Saturday October 28 2017, @09:15AM
Oh-kay - I was thinking you're ranting meaninglessly about the time zones. http://www.timetemperature.com/tzus/florida_time_zone.shtml [timetemperature.com] 9 and most of a tenth county are in central time. For some reason, I never realized just how far east the line jumps south of Indiana.
(Score: 4, Informative) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday October 28 2017, @11:24AM
Over in many places in the US, the immoral and undemocratic practice of gerrymandering has resulted in far more republicans being elected than should have been the case. This resulting in an extremist minority grabbing power and protecting an incompetent president just out of personal interests.
And then I'm not even opening the box of proportional representation, which is the only truly democratic way to hold elections.
Was signed: A republican who does still believe in morality and upholding the truth.
(Score: 2, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday October 28 2017, @04:23PM
Someone got triggered by everyone pointing out that Trump lost the popular vote. Go ahead, try and convince yourself that the majority of US citizens are as dumb as you :D
(Score: 5, Informative) by Joe Desertrat on Saturday October 28 2017, @09:41PM
No they didn't. Some counties, if you include all inactive voters (voters whose mail ballots and other voter documents were returned as undeliverable because they moved, died or whatever), might have more people registered to vote than expected. However, inactive voters aren’t reflected in turnout tallies or signature-gathering requirements, don’t receive election materials, are ignored by campaigns and there is no evidence to suggest they voted.
Again, no they did not. The claims of fraud in New Hampshire were based on declaring that every domicile voter who did not subsequently acquire a New Hampshire driver's license after voting was voting fraudulently, a claim that is patently untrue. It is quite legal in New Hampshire for those residing in the state for a certain amount of time to vote there, whether they have a driver's license or not.
I'm not even sure what this means. In many cases long lines meant polls did not close until late yet they still met all state requirements for posting vote totals.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday October 28 2017, @11:35AM
MS-Windows / Genuine Advantage / Automatic upgrades / etc.
(Score: 5, Informative) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday October 28 2017, @01:30PM
Georgia has always been a special place as far as elections are concerned.
Here's quote from a Jimmy Carter speech to the legislature.
"I always remember one major amendment that took a lot of debate in the Senate. It was introduced by Bobby Rowan from Enigma, Georgia. The amendment said that no one in Georgia in the future could vote either in a primary or general election who had been dead more than three years. "
https://www.cartercenter.org/news/documents/doc1284.html [cartercenter.org]
(Score: 2) by J_Darnley on Sunday October 29 2017, @12:02AM
Those pesky Russian hackers are at it again, huh.