Worm attacked voter database in notorious Florida district

[IChing]

Source: computer world

May 16, 2007 (Computerworld) -- Sarasota County, Florida's computer database infrastructure was attacked by a notorious Internet worm on the first day of early voting during the 2006 election featuring the now-contested U.S. House race in Florida's 13th Congressional district between Christine Jennings (D) and Vern Buchanan (R).

In the early afternoon hours on Monday, October 23, 2006, an Internet worm slammed into the county's database system, breaching its firewall and overwriting the system's administrative password. The havoc brought the county's network, and the electronic voting system which relies on it, to its knees as Internet access was all but lost at voting locations for two hours that afternoon. Voters in one of the nation's most hotly contested Congressional elections were unable to cast ballots during the outage as officials were unable to verify registration data.

Remember Slammer?

An incident report filed by the county explains the intrusion and temporary havoc wrought by the virus.....snip

Read more: http://www.computerworld.com/action/article.do?command=viewArticleBasic&articleId=9019560&source=NLT_AM&nlid=1

[IChing]

1. A little more on slammer

The worm was made possible by a software security vulnerability in SQL Server first reported by Microsoft on July 24, 2002. A patch had been available from Microsoft for six months prior to the worm's launch, but many installations had not been patched -- including some at Microsoft.

Slammer worm crashed Ohio nuke plant network
Kevin Poulsen, SecurityFocus 2003-08-19
The Slammer worm penetrated a private computer network at Ohio's Davis-Besse nuclear power plant in January and disabled a safety monitoring system for nearly five hours, despite a belief by plant personnel that the network was protected by a firewall, SecurityFocus has learned.


The breach did not pose a safety hazard. The troubled plant had been offline since February, 2002, when workers discovered a 6-by-5-inch hole in the plant's reactor head. Moreover, the monitoring system, called a Safety Parameter Display System, had a redundant analog backup that was unaffected by the worm. But at least one expert says the case illustrates a growing cybersecurity problem in the nuclear power industry, where interconnection between plant and corporate networks is becoming more common, and is permitted by federal safety regulations.

http://www.securityfocus.com/news/6767

[AnnieBW]

26. My husband is very familiar with this worm

Because he's a computer security professional. He says that there is almost no way that this was an accidental infection. It also left the door open for someone to get into the network and hack.

[lpbk2713]

2. This lends credibility to the reason for the missing 18,000 votes.

This whole fiasco was handled wrong all the way around and everything was intentionally slanted against Jennings. And it wasn't all accidental errors either.

[Kelvin Mace]

3. Once again, we are proven right

And how many damn times have pompous asses like George Gilbert, Linda Lamone, and Cathy Cox told us that thing like this COULD NOT HAPPEN? They repeatedly derided those of us who pointed out the dangers of their perfect system as lunatics, conspiracy mongers and even SPAMMERS.

Once and for all let us face facts. The people running our elections are not experts on computer security, They wouldn't know what a firewall is if you drew a picture on the wall for them and set it on fire. These people are not competent to run a computer-based voting system. Allowing them to run such a system without competent oversight is a clear and present danger to our democratic system. Any election official that tells you that their grasp of the risk is superior to a computer expert's grasp of the risk is either deluded, arrogant, or lying through their teeth (or possibly arrogantly deluded and lying through their teeth).

[blm]

11. Exactly - even here at DU too many are quick to smear others with the CT tag

in order to escape the most simple questions that extend to our government's corruption.

[Sancho]

4. This is one of many similar problems with these machines in Florida...

In Sarasota, it was obvious there were problems. We've seen machine malfunctions in 2004 and 2006 that are unbelievable. I hope that this time they reverse the election or at least revote.

[C_U_L8R]

5. A worm named KKKarl???

[jayfish]

6. It Is A Bit Convenient Isn't It.? -NT-

Jay

[aquart]

7. Ever so.

[jayfish]

9. And Everything I've Read Points To...

people buying the story hook, line and sinker. How could it have taken so much time for them to some up with such a shoddy cover story?

Jay

[ChiciB1]

14. Much TOO Convenient... A WORM?? For THIS County???

If you live here, or have EVER had an encounter with KATHY DENT... well let's just say this VOTER ain't buying "W0RM" theory until I see it with my own EYES!!

Sarasota County is/was the home of Cruella (Katherine Harris) and the place is a tad CORRUPT!! IMO!

I've lived here for quite some time and have been "angry" about the politics here for most of it! True, it's is RED, but the Democrats signed up MORE voters in 2004 than Repukes and still it made no difference. Kathy Dent has also had more than one "scandal" surrounding her since she's been in office!!

They are taught very well around here... again IMO!!

Sarasota County SUCKS!!!

[valerief]

8. The Rove worm mebbe? nt

[Senator]

10. k&r

[TrogL]

12. The patch had been available for years

Didn't these systems receive a security audit?

No, of course not.

[IChing]

13. I'm not sure it was that specific worm

but it was a definite attack to degrade and corrupt the vote

[dbonds]

15. How would they be so incompetent

First, I didn't think voting machines communicated over the internet. Weren't they supposed to use a private dialup network? Why was a database not protected or patched? How did it just happen to favor republicans?

Sounds to me like they got caught hacking and made an excuse of the worm.

[BradBlog]

16. A Quick Summary of my ComputerWorld Story available here...

http://www.bradblog.com/?p=4480

...Also includes the two page report, which confirms that it was "a variant of the SQL Slammer Worm" (in re: the poster who asked about it upthread)

[mrdmk]

21. Dear Mr. Brad, something really sinks about this new development,

Worms, Virus, Trojan Horses and what not do not appear on a computer just because it has internet access. Also about the hacker story, if a hacker did bypass the firewall, there would be no need to plant a worm, then execute the worm, because that would immediately trigger the anti-virus software. Also, as much as I love Windows 2000, the operating system out of the box was NOT stable enough to be running for FIVE years without crashing and somebody not noticing the lack of updates. This press release is non-sense.

[FogerRox]

23. mrdmk, you bring up a very important point, er ah points

I have to agree

This press release is non-sense.

[loudsue]

17. What I've been trying to tell people: We were CHEATED out of more than

this election in 2006. This race in Florida is the one that has gotten the most coverage, but it was NOT the only incidence of screwed up voting machines. There have been many more that weren't even contested this heavily. It's just that this race was really close in the final tally. Many of the other places where we lost Dem seats, the computers counted more votes for republicans than were even registered in the district in total voters. It happened all around the country.

The panel of scientists I saw at the American Assoc. for the Advancement of Science convention in February '07, estimated that we lost 20+/- seats...seats that would have given Dems a much better majority than we got. A "mandate" if you will.

And what is WORSE, is that 2008 is going to be JUST AS BAD!!! There needs to be serious activism going on about this NOW....NOT AFTER THE 2008 ELECTION STEALS MORE SEATS!!!

We need to get a panel of voting rights activists before the Senate & House committees, and MORE IMPORTANTLY, we need to get our STATE GOVERNMENTS to act on shutting down these fucking machines BEFORE the elections!!

:kick::kick::kick::kick::kick::kick:

[Arugula Latte]

19. I don't understand why the elected Dems. aren't SCREAMING about this stuff!

THEY have to be the ones to make noise. We can try to wake them up (and I have), but they fucking have to STEP UP TO THE PLATE to save the integrity of democracy in this nation. Why won't they? (Yes, there have been a couple of very notable exceptions).

I don't get it!!

[cosmicdot]

20. amen

Why won't they, indeed? campaign finance overhaul and voting/tabulating could have been in, at least, the 2nd 100 hours. The beat goes on.

[eridani]

22. Do you have a link to the AAAS presentation?

Thanks.

[loudsue]

24. No. I was there in person, not online.

If you google Steve Freeman you'll prolly find something on it. He was one of the panelists.

:kick:

[ChiciB1]

25. You Should Check Out The Local Newspaper Write-Up About

what THE local Supervisor of Elections still DOES NOT WANT TO DO ABOUT electronic voting in the county of which the 13th is located!!!

I would give you the link, but every time I mention the name of the paper MY NAME shows up on their web page and I don't like being used like that.

Kathy Dent is the Gonzo of this county!! Actually, given what KEEPS unraveling EVERY SINGLE DAY here in this country, I'm just about to throw in the towel and simply LEAVE to my kids to sort out!

I heard Barbara Boxer saying today on the Senate floor that The Idiot can't make his own rules or something to that effect. Well you know what?? HE IS MAKING HIS OWN RULES and CONGRESS sits on their ass! I KEEP hearing all this good stuff THEY are going to do and yet... NOTHING has changed!! This WH swimply ignores them, and they've broken almost every rule possible! Still, IMPEACHMENT is "off the table!"

So WHY would some "counties" in Florida be of ANY consequence?? I fought this fight for some time, but it just drives you crazy to run around and around and end up in the same place!

Check out the local paper in this city... An article that talks about voting machines here will make you want to slam your fist through your monitor!! Maybe not, maybe I've been too close to this stuff for MUCH too long and I only know how to SCREAM these days!

[va4wilderness]

18. Wait...does this mean the election was not legit?

I'm appalled that our electronic voting system was not "up to the task"
:sarcasm:



Term: 1st
First Elected: 2006
Percentage in Last Election: 50%
Major Opponent: Christine Jennings
http://www.congress.org/congressorg/bio/?id=152540

[hunter]

27. Honest, a worm ate my homework!

Why is it whenever these guys get in a tough spot, they come up with a bizarre excuse that sounds like something a naughty third grader would make up?

These horrible stunted creatures who never became adults are KILLING AND MAIMING people as they steal everything that isn't bolted down, and still they cry "It's not my fault!"

God help us, this nation is well along the way to a Soviet-style imperial collapse.