#AZAudit Maricopa & Other Arizona County Election Audits - #CyberNinjas / Jovan Pulitzer / Fann / Birther Ken Bennett

[LM K]

Thanks, Orlylicious!









Of course the idiots following this "audit" are saying that the SoS is referring to the previous audit.

[tek]

Bennett: "I had some volunteers that were helping with the Twitter. "

um, wut?

[LM K]

Bennett: "I had some volunteers that were helping with the Twitter. "

um, wut?

The Twitter is hard!

[Slim Cognito]

I'm lost.

[LM K]

I'm lost.

May I help?

[Slim Cognito]

Wifi router connected to audit servers sounds iffy. Or is that normal?

[Luke]

CNN Senior Natl Correspondent Kyung Lah is the #AZAuditPool right now and she's hilarious.

[Atticus Finch]

They don't need UV light to scan the ballots for bamboo fibers bring in a panda bear and if the panda bear eats the ballot then it proves that there is bamboo fibers in the ballot paper.

[Dave from down under]

They don't need UV light to scan the ballots for bamboo fibers bring in a panda bear and if the panda bear eats the ballot then it proves that there is bamboo fibers in the ballot paper.

But...

It would be a Panda with Asian ancestry and so would be part of the conspiracy and so couldn’t be trusted.

[fierceredpanda]

All pandas?

[LM K]

Wifi router connected to audit servers sounds iffy. Or is that normal?

There shouldn't have been a router or hard drive on the counting floor period. Certainly volunteers can help with "the Twitter" without wifi.

Eta: please see noblepa's post. Noblepa knows a lot more than I do!

[LM K]

One America News is allowed almost anywhere. CNN has to use binoculars to do what a judge ordered the frauditors do?

[LM K]

Arizona Secretary of State Katie Hobbs posted on social media Wednesday that a Wi-Fi router was discovered by Maricopa County audit observers connected to the servers that are being used to collect and store ballot data.

“There’s no way to ensure that ballot images, vote counts & perhaps voter data weren’t connected to external networks or the internet,” she tweeted.

WHY IS THIS IMPORTANT?

The public was told that the audit of Maricopa County’s 2.1 million ballots would be done on what is called an “air-gapped” network.

What this means is computers, cameras, and other devices can communicate with each other, but cannot connect to the outside world. Having a wireless router on an air-gapped network means that, depending upon how the router and the larger network are configured, there is potential for devices to reach the internet.

Maricopa County audit leaders have in their possession, not just the county’s ballots, but also voter registration data that includes private information such as driver licenses and the last four numbers of a voter’s Social Security number. They also have a digital copy of signatures for county registrants that voted in November.

While a network connection could put this data in jeopardy of leaking out, there is no indication at this time if the voter data and signatures are even present on the network.

This comes at a time when the Arizona State Senate is threatening to subpoena Maricopa County’s networking equipment to ensure that election equipment used by the county was not connected to the internet during the November general election.

WHAT DO WE KNOW?

A source on the floor where the audit is being conducted with knowledge of the situation said that the type of router being used is one that you might find in any home.

Audit staff insist that the router is being used only to give IP addresses to wireless cameras that are being used to keep the ballots and audit process under surveillance.

The router did not have a cable attached to its internet port but was connected to the main networking switches that all of the audit devices are using.

DOES THIS MEAN THE NETWORK WAS NOT SECURED?

No, but it does mean that audit leaders need to prove definitively that the wireless router was not connected to the internet in some way.

Networks that handle election data do not typically contain wireless routers since they can make it easier for cyber criminals to enter a network. Election officials confirmed to ABC15 that MCTEC, Maricopa County’s election warehouse, does not have a wireless router.

The presence of a wireless router does not automatically mean that there is an internet connection. An IT security analyst who works for ABC15 said there are multiple ways Wi-Fi routers can be properly configured and secured.

“The introduction of a Wi-Fi router is a huge opening to a network, air-gapped or otherwise," he explained. “If I were tasked with setting up this network, I would have simply purchased equipment that would have made the network beyond reproach and undoubtedly secure.”

Without knowing the full scope of the audit’s network, it is difficult to say whether the Wi-Fi router had the Wi-Fi settings properly disabled and that the network was properly isolated from the internet.

The Maricopa audit twitter account stated on social media that, “No wireless was ever enabled. This was explicitly explained to the SoS observers on site. We are open to providing all passwords and access needed for a forensic investigation of the router if requested.”

Cyber Ninjas totally know how to keep important info secure.

[Uninformed]

“No wireless was ever enabled”

So how did the cameras communicate?

[Luke]

NEW: Give till it hurts, marks!

Brahm Resnik @brahmresnik 6m
NEW Arizona Senate Republicans extend contract for audit at Veterans Memorial Coliseum through June 30. The Wesley Bolin Building will warehouse ballots & other eqpt/materials for one week.

[SlimSloSlider]

Wifi router connected to audit servers sounds iffy. Or is that normal?

“Normal” has little to do with this “audit.”

[noblepa]

Wifi router connected to audit servers sounds iffy. Or is that normal?

There shouldn't have been a router or hard drive on the counting floor period. Certainly volunteers can help with "the Twitter" without wifi.

I don't agree.

Some sort of servers are probably necessary for the vote scanners to upload vote tallies to. However, all the servers and devices should be connected with each other via cat-5 ethernet cable. There should be no connection to any device that is connected to the internet. That is what the term "air gapped" means. Only air sits between the server(s) and the outside network. Not even a firewall. No path to the internet, period. But some servers are probably necessary.

After all, the voting machines and scanners are designed to work on a local area network, in the counting room of the county board of elections. It would be virtually impossible for the devices to function without a server to talk to.

Having a wifi router connected to one of the servers creates a potential path to the internet and who knows where.

The article mentions that it is the same kind of router one might use in the home. Home routers usually come from the factory with extremely lax settings. Any device is allowed to connect to the wifi router. You must take positive steps to configure the router to use passwords or specific MAC addresses, in order to prevent unauthorized access. Its all in the configuration.

Then too, the configuration of the servers is a question. Windows based servers, for example, by default, have an administrator account that has virtually unfettered access to anything and everything on the server. There is also a default network shared drive called C$. This gives any account with the proper permissions access to everything on the C: drive. If the server had other hard drives, such as a D: or E: drive, there is a default share for D$ and E$. Back when I was actively working on Windows servers, the default userid was "admin" and the default password was "admin". It was recommended that the first thing you do when setting up such a server is to rename the administrator userid and to change its password. Was this done? The bad guys know this.

Imagine this scenario: The server(s) are setup using default Microsoft security. That in itself is a bit of a problem, because any potential bad actor knows how that security works. Further imagine that they took the wifi router out of the box, attached it to the server with a cat-5 cable and turned it on, without reconfiguring its internal security options to limit access. The wireless cameras being used then legitimately connect to the server via the wifi router.

So far, so good, although if you're at all computer savvy, you can probable already see the security flaws.

Now, imagine a bad guy, possibly not even inside the arena, but sitting in his car with a wifi-enabled device, such as a laptop. If he has somehow found out the adminstrator password of the server inside the arena, he can easily connect to that server and download anything he likes from the server. He could even plant false evidence of the "fraud" that they are looking for. If the bad guy is inside the arena, its even easier.

It is possible to harden this network I've imagined, but its not easy, especially if these servers were setup hastily. Tight security takes a lot of time and thought to lock a system down.

They should not have been using any wifi equipment in the first place. The presence of a wifi hotspot creates a potential hole in the security. Guarding against intrusion in such a network depends on software and proper configuration of that software.

If the system were truly "air gapped", there would be no potential path to the internet. For security purposes, a wifi router must be considered to be a direct connection to the internet. While wifi transmits its signals through the air, it is the equivalent of a cable connection. If the only way the devices on the arena floor can communicate with each other is via a physical cable, the system is inherently secure. Breaching such a system requires physical access. The bad guy would have to be able to walk up to the server and touch it or plug a flash drive into the server's USB port. Or use a patch cable to directly connect to the server. Introducing wifi makes the system inherently insecure.

Such access would be highly visible and tough to pull off, at least if they really had decent security. Reports are that doors were left open and unguarded. That means anyone could walk in. The volunteers doing the counting probably don't know each other, so would not identify recognize someone who didn't belong there and wouldn't know that that person had no reason to interact with the server(s).

Given that the people running this recount (its not an audit, its an unauthorized recount) have so far shown little evidence that they know what they are doing, I would have zero confidence that the system is secure.

That said, I have seen no evidence that there actually HAS been a security breach, but I can see a lot of potential gaps in their security, and I'm not even a network security expert. (Note: the bad guys ARE network security experts).

[LM K]

“No wireless was ever enabled”

So how did the cameras communicate?

And "the Twitter"?

[noblepa]

Wifi router connected to audit servers sounds iffy. Or is that normal?

“Normal” has little to do with this “audit.”

What's going on in Arizona is not an audit, by any stretch of the imagination.

It is an unauthorized recount. They are simply counting the ballots again and supposedly physically examining the paper ballots.

An actual audit could be done without recounting the ballots. It involves examining the equipment used on November 3 and shortly thereafter to count the ballots, to make sure that those devices were secure and that the network was secure. An auditor would need to be a network security expert. They probably should hold a Microsoft MCSE and/or a Cisco CCNA certificate.

They would map all the connections that each device had to any other devices, making sure that only those connections that were necessary are active and they are properly secured.

They would make sure that all system passwords were in place and were not easily guessed. They would further interview the county's own security people to make sure that those passwords were changed regularly and that they were shared only with those technicians who needed them. Ideally, different functions of the network and servers would only be authorized for users who needed to access that function. Each of those users would only have access to the parts of the system necessary for their specific tasks.

Tasks would be assigned to different people, and each given a unique, non-shared userid/password. No one should have the "keys to the kingdom".

A real audit would begin with the written procedures used by the county board of elections. If those procedures were deemed adequate, interviews would be conducted with the county personnel to insure that those procedures were actually followed.

An audit does not involve running the paper ballots through the scanners again. The physical ballots are only needed if you wish to examine them to rule out (or to discover) fraudulent paper ballots. In other words, auditors would LOOK at the ballots, perhaps very closely, but would not need to actually scan them.

I work for a county government in Ohio (not an elections board) and we are in the midst of an audit by the State of Ohio's Auditor's office. So far, they have not physically removed any servers or routers. I personally have been responsible for providing them information about our system backups.

I have given them copies of the jobs that perform the backups. I have identified the disk volumes being backed up. I have provided information from our automated job scheduling system to show when the jobs are scheduled to run. I have given them copies of the job scheduler logs, showing that the jobs did, in fact, run when I said they were scheduled to run. They have examined this documentation of the process and made a decision on whether or not the process adequately protects us against data loss and they have verified that we were following our own procedures.

THAT is an audit.

The Arizona state Senate is conducting an unauthorized recount, not an audit. It is possibly in violation of Arizona's own laws regarding the handling, security and storage of ballots.

[SlimSloSlider]

What's going on in Arizona is not an audit, by any stretch of the imagination.

They probably should hold a Microsoft MCSE and/or a Cisco CCNA certificate.

They would map all the connections that each device had to any other devices, making sure that only those connections that were necessary are active and they are properly secured.

They would make sure that all system passwords were in place and were not easily guessed. They would further interview the county's own security people to make sure that those passwords were changed regularly and that they were shared only with those technicians who needed them. Ideally, different functions of the network and servers would only be authorized for users who needed to access that function. Each of those users would only have access to the parts of the system necessary for their specific tasks.

Tasks would be assigned to different people, and each given a unique, non-shared userid/password. No one should have the "keys to the kingdom".

A real audit would begin with the written procedures used by the county board of elections. If those procedures were deemed adequate, interviews would be conducted with the county personnel to insure that those procedures were actually followed.

I work for a county government in Ohio (not an elections board) and we are in the midst of an audit by the State of Ohio's Auditor's office. So far, they have not physically removed any servers or routers. I personally have been responsible for providing them information about our system

...

THAT is an audit.

The Arizona state Senate is conducting an unauthorized recount, not an audit. It is possibly in violation of Arizona's own laws regarding the handling, security and storage of ballots.

Having trained MCSEs and CCNAs, I can only concur.
The purpose is to sow doubt, not reap truth.

[Gregg]

I'ma put this here, 'cause this is where it all started...

Off Topic

So, yeah I had my little pout. After my middle school girl episode I am back, no big deal, toss a few virgins on the fire and someone grab me a bourbon and coke, please. Oh, and some coke, sniff...

But I gotta say something. I don't appreciate being called a racist, deep down I'm more than anything a thoroughly decent human being, I pay my taxes, try to help feed the hungry, clothe the naked, comfort the wretched and buy lunch for my co-workers when its my turn.

I'm also, admittedly, a condescending arrogant asshole. Who thinks he's a lot funnier than he is, and sometimes I'm really pretty damn funny. I say outrageous stuff, I use bad words, I often speak in the voice of those whom I am attempting to mock and if you think I got a mouth on me, go to the after party of a Klan rally, them phuckers say some racist shit and they mean it.

If that offends you, part of me is sorry. While I often do want to make people mad, I mean, really mad, I want them to be mad at what I'm showing them, not at me for showing it.

If you're just too plug stupid to realize when I'm using this protagonist voice, well, you're probably too phucking stupid to be hanging around me anyhow. Modesty was never one of my faults but I am pretty clever if I do say so myself. If you want a second opinion on that, I have two walls of very expensive wallpaper from places that think I'm at least competent in my field.

So, I'm gonna say bad words. I'm gonna once or twice maybe go farther than I shoulda, and when I do feel free to slap me upside the head and call me Jethro, or not.

But if you're just trying to be a little holier than thou, well, you can come on up to my battlefield and kiss my entire white ass. I might be a little over the top but what I ain't is mean. Except when I am. Avoid me when I am, I'm wicked smart and I never held a grudge more than 35 years longer than I had to.

Yeah, I hijacked the thread, sue me...

[LM K]

What's going on in Arizona is not an audit, by any stretch of the imagination.

It is an unauthorized recount. They are simply counting the ballots again and supposedly physically examining the paper ballots.

An actual audit could be done without recounting the ballots. It involves examining the equipment used on November 3 and shortly thereafter to count the ballots, to make sure that those devices were secure and that the network was secure. An auditor would need to be a network security expert. They probably should hold a Microsoft MCSE and/or a Cisco CCNA certificate.

They would map all the connections that each device had to any other devices, making sure that only those connections that were necessary are active and they are properly secured.

They would make sure that all system passwords were in place and were not easily guessed. They would further interview the county's own security people to make sure that those passwords were changed regularly and that they were shared only with those technicians who needed them. Ideally, different functions of the network and servers would only be authorized for users who needed to access that function. Each of those users would only have access to the parts of the system necessary for their specific tasks.

Tasks would be assigned to different people, and each given a unique, non-shared userid/password. No one should have the "keys to the kingdom".

A real audit would begin with the written procedures used by the county board of elections. If those procedures were deemed adequate, interviews would be conducted with the county personnel to insure that those procedures were actually followed.

An audit does not involve running the paper ballots through the scanners again. The physical ballots are only needed if you wish to examine them to rule out (or to discover) fraudulent paper ballots. In other words, auditors would LOOK at the ballots, perhaps very closely, but would not need to actually scan them.

I work for a county government in Ohio (not an elections board) and we are in the midst of an audit by the State of Ohio's Auditor's office. So far, they have not physically removed any servers or routers. I personally have been responsible for providing them information about our system backups.

I have given them copies of the jobs that perform the backups. I have identified the disk volumes being backed up. I have provided information from our automated job scheduling system to show when the jobs are scheduled to run. I have given them copies of the job scheduler logs, showing that the jobs did, in fact, run when I said they were scheduled to run. They have examined this documentation of the process and made a decision on whether or not the process adequately protects us against data loss and they have verified that we were following our own procedures.

THAT is an audit.

The Arizona state Senate is conducting an unauthorized recount, not an audit. It is possibly in violation of Arizona's own laws regarding the handling, security and storage of ballots.

The "auditors" are asserting that the SoS didn't adequately follow their own procedures and that there are additional problems that need to be evaluated.

The "auditors" have violated AZ laws regarding the handling, security, and storage of ballots multiple times. The violations are shocking and disturbing.

[LM K]

Yeah, I hijacked the thread, sue me...

So did I. Let's be codefendants!

I'm glad you're back, my dear.

[Luke]

Karen Fann sent an 11 page letter to Jack Sellers. Haven't seen it on Twitter yet. This is a Telegram link to it:

Page 1:

Fann.JPG (136.04 KiB) Viewed 1966 times

Idiot Patrick Byrne posts lying points for the marks to amplify.

Patrick Byrne’s America Project, [12.05.21 23:13]
[ File : 5-12-21_Letter_to_Maricopa_County_Board-1.pdf ]

Patrick Byrne’s America Project, [12.05.21 23:22]
After reading the Arizona Senate’s letter to the Maricopa county board, I have questions. Feel free to amplify these across social media, because these are the points and questions to which we citizens should demand answers:

Maricopa County purposefully deleted a directory full of election databases related to the past 2020 election cycle ~10 days before the election equipment was delivered to the @arizonaaudit. This is destruction of evidence and at least, contempt.

Maricopa County purposefully deleted a directory full of election databases ~10 days before turning election equipment over to the AZ Senate audit team.

Breaking Update: @arizonaaudit uncovers evidence that Maricopa County intentionally deleted election data! They stole the election!

• 4/12 – County deleted election databases
• 4/21-22 – County election equipment was delivered to the audit

Why did security seals arrive cut and why were they placed at the bottom of the boxes? Why were security ballot bags not used by the County?

Is this the Counties customary practice for storing ballots?

AZ Attorney General Mark Brnovich needs to get involved immediately. What is Maricopa County hiding? We need answers! @arizonaaudit

AZ Senate Election Audit finds that Maricopa County delivered ballot boxes missing a significant number of ballots! We need AZ Attorney General Mark Brnovich to get involved now! @arizonaaudit

The @arizonaaudit discovers that there are missing ballots in Maricopa County! The Counties numbers don’t match up!

Multiple batches delivered by Maricopa County to the @arizonaaudit are missing ballots!

AZ Senate Audit uncovers that Maricopa County has no chain-of-custody documentation for the ballots that the County provided for the audit!

The @arizonaaudit team finds unsealed ballot bags and cut security seals at the bottom of ballot boxes.

Maricopa Board of Supervisors refuses to comply with the AZ Senate Legislative Subpoenas. What are they hiding??

Election fraud discovered in AZ! Now we know why the Democrats have opposed the @arizonaaudit from the beginning. They purposefully deleted election databases in Maricopa County before the audit began.

AZ election audit uncovers major election fraud in Maricopa County! Democrats knowingly deleted specific election data before the audit started!

AZ Secretary of State @katiehobbs opposed the @arizonaaudit in Maricopa County and could now be held criminally responsible for the newly found fraud!

Soros funded AZ SoS @katiehobbs could be in serious legal trouble after @arizonaaudit uncovers serious fraud in Maricopa County!

Patrick Byrne’s America Project, [13.05.21 00:17]
https://creativedestructionmedia.com/ne ... -to-audit/

They go around and around.

[RTH10260]

The "audit" of routers will never happen.

It seems that many of the proponents had assumed the routers were sitting in storage, like the voting machines. They have in the mean time learnt that this is not the case. I am waiting until someone realizes that these boxes have now been six months since the elections running the networks. In this time many will have received some sort of security update of the firmware. IOW they are no longer the same they were as at election. The audit fails cause "change" (nasty conspiracists will say they were manipulated to hide something sinister). Same goes for the stored netwok definitions, many boxes will have been reconfigured to changes in the network topology. IOW an audit will also too fail on them.

Next there will be a simple calculation of the Great Numbers - (the Biggest Numbers for a former impotus). A technical audit will be overwhelmed. There was once a number mentioned, 5000+. Let's assume these mental ninjas were able to get their hands on any networking forensic specialists. It's my bet that one specialist will take at least a half a day to analyze one box and write a preliminary report on the unit. Not that he has already looked for something nefarious that would be well disguised. A correctly performed audit would require a second specialist to review. Let's assume that a pair of these specialist were able to handle 6 boxes among them in two days. A quick approximation tells me they would need like 850 days for the audit. I leave it to the educated reader to come up with the number of teams of networking gurus required to get this audit done in resonable time. Note to self - networking gurus with a forensic flare are a scarce and costly resource.

Next just for the sake of the discussion, assume Maricopa county had those 5000+ boxes ready and correctly preconfigurated. The limited number of network technicians will probably take about two hours per box to replace a unit (powering down, detach cabling, remove box, insert replacement, reattach cabling in correct order, restart the router). They would likely be working in pairs, plus some observer getting in their way to ensure that the picked box remains untampered. One team could likely manage 8 replacements a day. Don't forget the overhead of moving from site to site and getting access to secured netwroking facilities. Optimistic calculation would sugget it takes 600 days for one team, are there sufficient teams free to get the routers out for audit in a sensible timeframe?

Again for the sake of discussion, above paragraph presumed replacement routers all ready for use. But Maricopa county would need to purchase replacement routers from the manufactureres (a $6million price tag was once mentioned, is the budget ready?). The formal purchase process takes time. Then manufacturers usually don't have that number ready on the shelf for delivery. I predict a lead time of three to four months until the units arrive in mass. These numbers will next overwhelm the small number of workers that run security reviews and stamp the devices as trusted. Their team size is related to the daily need, a couple of units a month requiring replacement. They have a position of special trust and head count cannot just be multiplied over night. Next step is router configuration. Again a limited number of network specialist who know how to correctly configure the units and test them. The new routers will not always be the same models they would be replacing. Programmers will need to know how to transpose the definition from the aged to the modern hardware. Depending on the procurement policies in place, new units may come from a different manufacturer. Network programmers may have to learn about the new devices.

As I said - I am just waiting until someone of the audit team throws in the towel