Monthly Archives: August 2017

2 Congressmen Watched Voting Machines Being Hacked

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Primer

33 states accepted DHS aid to secure elections

The Department of Homeland Security (DHS) provided cybersecurity assistance to 33 state election offices and 36 local election offices leading up to the 2016 presidential election, according to information released by Democratic congressional staff.

During the final weeks of the Obama administration, the DHS announced that it would designate election infrastructure as critical, following revelations about Russian interference in the 2016 election.

Since January, two states and six local governments have requested cyber hygiene scanning from the DHS, according to a memo and DHS correspondence disclosed Wednesday by the Democratic staff of the Senate Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee.

The information is related to the committee’s ongoing oversight of the DHS decision to designate election infrastructure.

The intelligence community said back in January that in addition to directing cyberattacks on the Democratic National Committee and top Democratic officials, Russia also targeted state and local electoral systems not involved in vote tabulating.

In June, DHS officials told senators investigating Russian interference that there was evidence that Russia targeted election-related systems in 21 states, none of them involved in vote tallying.

Officials have previously confirmed breaches in Arizona and Illinois, though it remains unclear whether other systems were successfully breached. Lawmakers such as Sen. Mark Warner (D-Va.) have demanded more information on the specific states targeted.

Homeland Security and Government Affairs ranking member Claire McCaskill (D-Mo.) wrote then-Secretary of Homeland Security John Kelly back in March, asking for more information on his plans for the critical infrastructure designation. The information released Wednesday is drawn from his response on June 13. Kelly has since left his post to serve as President Trump’s chief of staff.

“Prior to the election, DHS offered voluntary, no-cost cybersecurity services and assistance to election officials across all 50 states. By Election Day, 33 state election offices and 36 local election offices requested and received these cyber hygiene assessments of their internet-facing infrastructure,” Kelly wrote.

“In addition, one state election office requested and received a more in-depth risk and vulnerability assessment of their election infrastructure.”

Given the critical infrastructure designation, the DHS is providing cyber hygiene assessments, which include vulnerability scanning of election-related systems excluding voting machines and tallying systems, which the department recommends being disconnected from the internet.

The department also offers risk and vulnerability assessments, which include penetration testing, social engineering, wireless discovery and identification, and database and operating systems scanning. The DHS is also responsible for sharing threat information with owners and operators of critical infrastructure, which now include state and local election officials.

“Following the establishment of election infrastructure as critical infrastructure, several state and local governments requested new or expanded cybersecurity services from DHS,” Kelly disclosed in June, according to the letter. “Specifically, an additional two states and six local governments requested to begin cyber hygiene scanning (one state has, however, ended its service agreement). DHS also received one request for the risk and vulnerability assessment service.”

Many state and local election officials have opposed the designation, saying that the DHS has not offered enough information about what it means. The department has insisted that assistance will be given only to states that request it.

In the letter, Kelly, who has acknowledged objections, said there are “no plans to make any changes to the designation of election infrastructure as a critical infrastructure subsector.”

All of the Democratic members of the Senate Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee have called for a full investigation into Russian election interference. The matter is already under investigation by the House and Senate Intelligence committees. The memo issued by Democratic staff on Wednesday was sent to the full committee.

Background at a Las Vegas Convention:

LAS VEGAS—For the first time in the 25 years of the world’s largest hacker convention, DefCon, two sitting U.S. Congressmen trekked here from Washington, D.C., to discuss their cybersecurity expertise on stage.

Rep. Will Hurd, a Texas Republican, and Rep. Jim Langevin, a Rhode Island Democrat, visited hacking villages investigating vulnerabilities in cars, medical devices, and voting machines; learned about how security researchers plan to defend quantum computers from hacks; and met children learning how to hack for good.

On Sunday, the last day of the conference, Hurd and Langevin delivered their own message: We come in peace. Please help us.

During a fireside chat-style conversation moderated by Joshua Corman, director of the Cyber Statecraft Initiative at the Atlantic Council, Hurd, chairman of the House Subcommittee on Information Technology, and Langevin, co-founder and co-chair of the Congressional Cybersecurity Caucus, called for the more than 2,000 hackers in the audience to “develop a dialogue” with their local representative in Congress.

“Never underestimate the value that you can bring to the table in helping to educate members and staff of what the best policies are, what’s going to work, and what’s not going to work,” Langevin said, pointing to Luta Security CEO and bug bounty expert Katie Moussouris’ ongoing advocacy for changes to the Wassenaar Arrangement, a decades-old international accord on how countries can transport “intrusion software” and other weapons across international borders.

Moussouris and Iain Mulholland of VMware have effectively convinced Wassenaar member countries to delay their adoption of proposed revisions to the agreement, as they’ve pushed for new language to better protect security researchers’ work.

The conversation between hackers and Congress has never been monosyllabic. But it has been frosty for decades, as federal prosecutors have used American antihacking laws such as the Computer Fraud and Abuse Act and Electronic Communication Privacy Act to punish people conducting legitimate security research.

As many security researchers continue to worry about how these laws might affect them, some have begun to use their expertise to influence the laws—and the lawmakers behind them.

Langevin and Hurd’s plea for hacker-legislator collaboration follows calls by hackers at last year’s DefCon for greater government regulation of software security.

“We don’t have voluntary minimum safety standards for cars; we have a mandatory minimum,” Corman told The Parallax at the time. “What tips the equation [for software] is the Internet of Things, because we now have bits and bytes meeting flesh and blood.”

Hurd said security researchers could play an important role in addressing increasingly alarming vulnerabilities in the nation’s voting apparatus. DefCon’s first voting machine-hacking village this weekend hosted a voting machine from Shelby County, Tenn., that unexpectedly contained personal information related to more than 600,000 voters. Village visitors managed to hack the machine, along with 29 others.

“We have to ensure that the American people can trust the vote-tabulating process,” Hurd said, acknowledging that DefCon attendees were able to hack each machine in the village. “The work that has been done out here is important in educating the secretaries of state all around the country, as well as the election administrators,” about secure technologies and practices.

Langevin and Hurd’s comments seemed to strike the right notes with hackers in attendance. Following Edward Snowden’s leaking of NSA documents and Apple’s refusal to create an encryption backdoor for law enforcement to the iPhone, relations between the hacking community and Washington have been strained at best, notes Herb Lin, a computer security policy expert and research fellow at Stanford University’s Center for International Security and Cooperation. But markedly improving the relationship will require more than a plea for collaboration, he warns.

“It’s better than what’s happened in the past, which is both nothing and active hostility,” he says. “One act by itself is not a game changer.”

The chat ended with assurances of more action from both sides. Corman said he’d like to see members of Congress attend more hacker conferences, such as ShmooCon in Washington, and Hurd promised that he wouldn’t let his experiences this past weekend go to waste.

“These conversations are going to lead me to hold hearings on many of these topics in the subcommittee that I chair,” Hurd said.

***  More details that were recorded at the convention:

DEF CON 2017 –  Are voting systems secure? In August 2016, the FBI issued a “flash” alert to election officials across the country confirming that foreign hackers have compromised state election systems in two states.

Although the US largely invested in electronic voting systems their level of security appears still not sufficient against a wide range of cyber attacks.

During an interesting session at the DEF CON hacking conference in Las Vegas, experts set up 30 computer-powered ballot boxes used in American elections simulating the Presidential election.  Welcome in the DEF CON Voting Village!

At the 1st ever Voting Village at , attendees tinker w/ election systems to find vulnerabilities. I’m told they found some new flaws

The organization asked the participant to physically compromise the system and hack into them, and the results were disconcerting.

“We encourage you to do stuff that if you did on election day they would probably arrest you.” John Hopkins computer scientist Matt Blaze said,

Most of the voting machines in the DEF CON Voting Village were purchased via eBay (Diebold, Sequoia and Winvote equipment), others were bought from government auctions.

voting machines hacking

In less than 90 minutes hackers succeeded in compromising the voting machines, one of them was hacker wirelessly.

“Without question, our voting systems are weak and susceptible. Thanks to the contributions of the hacker community today, we’ve uncovered even more about exactly how,” said Jake Braun, cybersecurity lecturer at the University of Chicago.

The analysis of the voting machines revealed that some of them were running outdated OS like Windows XP and Windows CE and flawed software such as unpatched versions of OpenSSL.

Some of them had physical ports open that could be used by attackers to install malicious applications to tamper with votes.

Even if physical attacks are easy to spot and stop, some voting machines were using poorly secured Wi-Fi connectivity.

The experts Carsten Schurmann at the DEF CON Voting Village hacked a WinVote system used in previous county elections via Wi-Fi, he exploited the MS03-026 vulnerability in Windows XP to access the voting machine using RDP.

Greetings from the Defcon voting village where it took 1:40 for Carsten Schurmann to get remote access to this WinVote machine.

Another system could be potentially cracked remotely via OpenSSL bug CVE-2011-4109, it is claimed.

huge cheer just went up in @votingvilllagedc as hackers managed to load Rick Astley video onto a voting machine

The good news is that most of the hacked equipment is no longer used in today’s election.

 

The 2 New AF1’s for POTUS are Coming From the Boneyard

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Transaero was owned primarily by Aleksandr Pleshakov and his wife Olga Pleshakova, who was the CEO of the airline for most of its existence. In 2105, Dmitry Medvedev gave the green light to begin bankruptcy proceedings for Transaero airlines, according to sources cited by online newspaper Gazeta.ru. Negotiations on a takeover of Russia’s second-biggest carrier by Aeroflot have been deadlocked. According to sources, Aeroflot took a hard line refusing the Transaero consolidation. Later that same year,

Aeroflot said it intended to acquire a 75 percent stake in Transaero, which has about a $4 billion debt. Aeroflot’s main shareholder is the Russian state, which owns 51 percent stake in the carrier.

With the hundreds of millions of dollars the Obama gave to Iran due to a resolving outstanding issues with Iran, many of those dollars have done to bolster Iran’s aircraft industry where Boeing is part of the contractor list.

Further for Boeing and Iran, at list prices, the order is worth in the neighborhood of $17.6 billion, and even applying a standard discount of 45%, Boeing is still walking away with $9.5-10 billion in actual revenue. This represents by far the largest deal between Iran and a U.S. company, and it was inevitable as a result of the relaxed restrictions on Iran’s economy. The Islamic country is certainly aware that its position amongst U.S. politicians, particularly Republicans, is precarious. Accordingly, this order was almost a certainty — as it immensely increases the cost and pain of resuscitating sanctions were the Republicans to attempt such a gambit. Still, a win is a win, and Boeing has won more orders to fill its production gap on the current generation 777 (especially powerful given the rate cut), as well as more orders for the 737 MAX, 777-9X, and critically for the 747-8 (adding a few months of additional production to the backlog).

There are still some outstanding questions, including how Iran Air will finance these aircraft (export financing has been an issue even in Europe), and whether the 747-8 orders are new build or those planned for Transaero. But irrespective of some uncertainty, this is nothing but a win for Boeing.

Trump Wanted a Cheaper Air Force One. So the USAF Is Buying a Bankrupt Russian Firm’s Undelivered 747s

The service is reportedly getting a good deal on the jets, which list for around $390 million and are now sitting in the Mojave Desert.

President Donald Trump said the projected cost of new Air Force One aircraft was too high, so the U.S. Air Force found a way to lower it: by buying a pair of Boeing 747 jetliners abandoned by a bankrupt Russian airline.

Air Force officials are now finalizing a contract with Boeing for the two planes, according to three defense officials with knowledge of the deal. The Pentagon could publicly announce the deal as soon as this week.

“We’re working through the final stages of coordination to purchase two commercial 747-8 aircraft and expect to award a contract soon,” Air Force spokeswoman Ann Stefanek said in a statement.

The Air Force is not expected to disclose the specific value of the contract, but officials said that the military is getting a good deal on the planes. Boeing lists the average sticker price of a 747-8 as $386.8 million; the actual amount paid by airlines and other customers varies with quantities, configurations, and so forth.

“We’re still working toward a deal to provide two 747-8s to the Air Force — this deal is focused on providing a great value for the Air Force and the best price for the taxpayer,” Boeing spokeswoman Caroline Hutcheson said in a statement.

The 747s that will be transformed for Presidential transport were originally ordered in 2013 by Transaero, which was Russia’s second-largest airline until it went bankrupt in 2015. Boeing built two of the four jets in the order, but the airline never took ownership of them.

Typically, an airline makes a 1 percent down payment when it orders a plane, then pays the balance in installments. Transaero did not fulfill its scheduled payments, according to an industry source.

“Aeroflot absorbed most of Transaero’s existing fleet, but declined to pick up Transaero’s 747-8I orders worth $1.5 billion at list prices,” FlightGlobalreported last month.

So Boeing flight-tested the two completed jets and put them in storage. Flight tracking data shows that the aircraft, numbered N894BA and N895BA, were last flown in February, to the Southern California Logistics Airport in Victorville, a sprawling facility in the Mojave Desert whose hot, dry air prevents corrosion. This “boneyard” is largely occupied by retired commercial jets that still bear the liveries of Delta, FedEx, British Airways, and Cathay Pacific. Other planes, unmarked, sit with their engines shrinkwrapped in anticipation of one day returning to flight.

Boeing has been paying to store the two 747s in new condition while searching for a buyer, which allowed the Air Force to negotiate a good deal for them, sources said. It’s similar to the way car dealers discount new vehicles from the previous year when new models hit the lot.

Turning a standard 747 into a flying White House requires more than a blue-and-white paint job. After the Air Force takes ownership of the planes, contractors will give them a state-of-the-art communications system, defensive countermeasures, and hardening to withstand an electromagnetic pulse caused by a nuclear explosion. New custom interiors will have conference rooms, offices and seating for White House staff, guests and journalists.

The Pentagon’s 2018 budget request, sent to Congress in February, shows that the Air Force plans to spend nearly $3.2 billion between 2018 and 2022 on two new Air Force One jets. Trump would likely fly on the new planes if he is elected to a second term.

The 747s currently flown as Air Force One are 747-200s, older models that started flying presidents in the early 1990s.

Nicknamed the “Queen of the Skies,” the four-engined 747 has been a tough sell in recent years. Airlines instead have opted for cheaper-to-fly two-engine planes like the 777. Boeing has likely built the last passenger 747; any future orders are likely to be for cargo versions.

United and Delta, the last two American carriers to fly older models of the 747, plan to retire the plane from service by year’s end. Just last week, the iconic aircraft made its last planned domestic revenue flight, a United trip from Chicago to San Francisco.

Pentagon Recommends Suspension of MAVNI, Foreign Infiltration

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It does not take but just a few to go AWOL or to flee the program to create a domestic national security disaster. Further, was the original vetting and background procedure watered down in recent years such that the vulnerability to this growing security risk manifested?

What the heck is really going on here? Remember in October of 2016 when Reuters reported this?

Forty-four Afghan troops visiting the United States for military training have gone missing in less than two years, presumably in an effort to live and work illegally in America, Pentagon officials said.

Although the number of disappearances is relatively small — some 2,200 Afghan troops have received military training in the United States since 2007 — the incidents raise questions about security and screening procedures for the programs.

There was yet another very similiar AWOL event in 2010 in Texas. 17 involved there.

The MAVNI program was limited to 5,200 people in Fiscal Year 2016. The fact sheet is here.

 

FNC/EXCLUSIVE: Defense Department investigators have discovered “potential security risks” in a Pentagon program that has enrolled more than 10,000 foreign-born individuals into the U.S. armed forces since 2009, Fox News has learned exclusively, with sources on Capitol Hill and at the Pentagon expressing alarm over “foreign infiltration” and enrollees now unaccounted for.

After more than a year of investigation, the Pentagon’s inspector general recently issued a report – its contents still classified but its existence disclosed here for the first time – identifying serious problems with Military Accessions Vital to the National Interest (MAVNI), a DOD program that provides immigrants and non-immigrant aliens with an expedited path to citizenship in exchange for military service.

Defense Department officials said the program is still active but acknowledged that new applications have been suspended.

Created in the final weeks of the Bush-Cheney administration and launched under then-President Barack Obama, MAVNI was designed to recruit individuals with foreign-language and other skills the Pentagon deems useful and in short supply. The program has had many success stories – most notably the Army’s Soldier of the Year in 2012, Sgt. Saral Shrestha, originally of Nepal – and independent analyses have found MAVNI recruits out-perform non-MAVNI soldiers in critical areas.

Yet concern over management of the program has grown over recent months.

“The lack of discipline in implementation of this program has created problems elsewhere,” said Rep. Steve Russell, R-Okla., a retired Army officer who sits on the House Armed Services subcommittee on military personnel. It was Russell who first publicly sounded alarms. During the markup of the latest defense authorization bill, on June 28, Russell noted: “The program has been replete with problems, to include foreign infiltration – so much so that the Department of Defense is seeking to suspend the program due to those concerns.”

Another lawmaker, whose committee does not enjoy jurisdiction over MAVNI – but whose panel could well come to focus on these problems, depending on their severity – told Fox News that the program had been “compromised” and that DOD officials have not presented answers to his questions about missing enrollees: “Where are they? What do they know? Where are they serving? What are their numbers?”

Contacted by Fox News, Army Lt. Col. Paul Haverstick, a Pentagon spokesman, said in a statement: “The Department of Defense is conducting a review of the MAVNI pilot program due to potential security risks associated with the program.” Beyond that, however, Haverstick declined to comment, citing “pending litigation.”

Defense Secretary James Mattis, whom sources said had developed his own concerns about MAVNI, was named as the sole defendant in a lawsuit filed in February by seven foreign-born MAVNI enrollees. The lawsuit alleged that a decision by top brass in September to tighten up access to security clearances issued through MAVNI had had the effect of “crippling their military careers.”

Sources said MAVNI’s problems included a vetting backlog that led to enrollment of many soldiers prior to completion of their background checks, and an attendant “drift” in the program’s criteria, with MAVNI being used as a vehicle for the hiring of workers – like cooks, drivers and mechanics – who did not possess the specialized skills the program was created to exploit.

The title of the inspector general’s classified report – “Evaluation of Military Services’ Compliance with Military Accessions Vital to the National Interest Program Security Reviews and Monitoring Programs” – hints at the problems, with its references to “security reviews” and “monitoring” of enrolled individuals.

Some lawmakers have received classified briefings on the matter. Sources said some of the countries of origin for MAVNI enrollees are “of concern,” but as of yet there is no evidence in the public domain that ISIS, Al Qaeda, or any other terrorist groups have penetrated the MAVNI program. Still, such a development remains an active concern.

“ISIS has always had desire to use migration as way to penetrate into countries,” said retired U.S. Army General Jack Keane, a Fox News military analyst. “They have done that successfully in Europe because of open borders, mass immigration with no vetting. In the U.S., we haven’t had any record of their penetration. And certainly if this program is compromised and there’s a possibility of that kind of penetration, it’s got to be thoroughly investigated.”

But, President Trump Hosted Saad Hariri at the White House

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So…surely President Trump knew who Hezbollah was and their history right? Oh..perhaps Hariri brought it up in the conversation that the ordnance for the next major battle against Israel has 150,000 missiles under ground in Lebanon, right?

Okay, how about how Iran and Hezbollah are one in the same in Lebanon..surely this was covered in that meeting….uh?

Did President Trump ask Prime Minister Hariri about what he knew regarding Iran’s missile launch and that satellite that failed? Did he ask Hariri why Iran needed a space program?

Anything? Well yes, Hariri asked the President Trump for money to control Hezbollah. The whole country is controlled by Hezbollah…what the heck?

Alright, more facts here.

Iran’s space program has emerged from a three-year dormancy initiated by Rouhani but probably issuing from technical and budgetary constraints as well. Further launches can be expected in the near future, likely renewing concerns over the nature of Iran’s missile and SLV programs. The scenario is especially worrisome when considering assessments that a ballistic-missile derivative of the Simorgh could potentially achieve intercontinental range. Iran insists its inherently military-run space program is for peaceful purposes only and that its ballistic missiles are for conventional deterrence at a range no greater than 2,000 kilometers. Such rhetoric and Iran’s technical limitations notwithstanding, the mere possibility of diverted know-how from an SLV to an ICBM program will unsettle many Western capitals. Previous close cooperation between Tehran and Pyongyang will provide no further solace. Detailed summary here.

photo

Then we have those pesky missiles that seem to get ignored until the WSJ posted a chilling summary:

In a rare moment of disagreement between Benjamin Netanyahu and Donald Trump, Israel’s prime minister last month rejected a U.S.-Russia cease-fire agreement that he said could cement the buildup of Hezbollah and Iranian forces along Israel’s border with Syria.

Mr. Netanyahu has good reason to be concerned. Israel’s head of military intelligence, Maj. Gen. Herzl Halevi, confirmed in June a Kuwaiti newspaper report that largely went unnoticed: Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps, in cooperation with Hezbollah, has been constructing missile-production facilities in Lebanon.

Buried more than 50 meters below ground and protected from aerial attack, these facilities could produce highly sophisticated rockets with ranges of more than 300 miles and equipped with advanced guidance systems.

Israeli officials now say that pre-emptive strikes may be necessary to destroy these missile capabilities before they’re operational. The result could be a bloody war that would see thousands of Hezbollah missiles hurled into Israeli airspace, with punishing Israeli reprisals and hundreds—if not thousands—of civilian deaths on both sides. It would be more chaos for Washington policy makers scrambling to manage a region already in flames.

Iran has long transferred missiles by ground and air through Syria to Hezbollah in Lebanon. In recent years, Israel repeatedly struck these transfers of what their officials call “game-changing” weaponry—weapons that could challenge Israel’s military superiority and pose severe threats to its civilians.

Despite significant success against many of these transfers, Hezbollah’s inventory has expanded to more than 150,000 missiles today from an estimated 50,000 missiles at the beginning of the second Lebanon War in 2006. And while many of these projectiles are crude, an increasing number are highly accurate, capable of delivering a massive payload to anywhere in Israel.

Israel, of course, has advanced short-, medium- and long-range missile defenses: the Iron Dome, David’s Sling and Arrow systems. But Iran and Hezbollah are now seeking an arsenal that can overwhelm these systems. More of the story here.

***

A top North Korean politician recently left Pyongyang for a 10-day trip to Iran, a country that may still be cooperating militarily with the Kim Jong Un regime.

Workers’ Party newspaper Rodong Sinmun reported Tuesday chairman of the Presidium of the Supreme Assembly of North Korea Kim Yong Nam left Pyongyang on Monday to attend the inauguration ceremony for President Hassan Rouhani.

Lastly, the U.S. is detecting significant North Korean submarine activity. And from VANDENBERG AIR FORCE BASE, Calif. –  The U.S. Air Force was preparing Tuesday to test an unarmed Minuteman 3 intercontinental ballistic missile with a launch from California, the fourth such test this year.

The 30th Space Wing says the missile was to be launched between 12:01 a.m. and 6:01 a.m. Wednesday from Vandenberg Air Force Base, about 130 miles (209 kilometers) northwest of Los Angeles.

An Air Force statement said the test would show the effectiveness, readiness, and accuracy of the weapon system.

Minuteman missiles are regularly tested with launches from Vandenberg that send unarmed re-entry vehicles 4,200 miles (6,800 kilometers) across the Pacific to a target area at Kwajalein Atoll.