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PaperclipPerfector  4d ago (text post)   22123 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of October 28, 2024

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Colorado Department of State has put out a press-release on a whoopsie:

The Colorado Department of State is aware that a spreadsheet located on the Department’s website improperly included a hidden tab including partial passwords to certain components of Colorado voting systems.

The Colorado Public Radio elaborates on what kind of passwords these were, and to which machines:

The Colorado Secretary of State’s office says a spreadsheet on the department’s website improperly included a tab with partial passwords to certain components of Colorado voting systems, known as BIOS passwords.

The Colorado Department of State calls these "partial" passwords and says no worries re election integrity:

“This does not pose an immediate security threat to Colorado’s elections, nor will it impact how ballots are counted,” wrote a spokesman for the office, Jack Todd, in a statement Tuesday. ... “There are two unique passwords for every election equipment component, which are kept in separate places and held by different parties. Passwords can only be used with physical in-person access to a voting system,” he wrote.

The BIOS passwords, that were stored unencrypted on an Excel spreadsheet that was up on the department's website (but in a hidden tap!), are "partial" in a sense that one needs another password to access "every election component".

I am not a certified IT geek, so I asked Claude for top three security concerns if a hacker got my computer's BIOS password:

Evil Maid Attack: They could modify boot settings to load malicious software before your operating system starts, potentially bypassing your OS security measures. This could allow them to install rootkits or keyloggers that are very difficult to detect.

Hardware Security Bypass: They could disable security features like Secure Boot or TPM (Trusted Platform Module), making your system more vulnerable to other attacks and potentially compromising disk encryption.

Data Theft: By changing boot order to external devices, they could boot into a different operating system to potentially access your hard drive data, even bypassing some OS-level password protections.

Those sound serious. That's OK, though, because I need my usual password to get into my account, so the BIOS password for my computer is just "partial", right? Claude patiently replies "Nope":

With BIOS access, an attacker can bypass your Windows password in several ways... [gives several examples of what one can do when booting from an external drive]. Think of it this way: Your Windows password is like a lock on your house's front door, but BIOS access is like having keys to all the windows and back doors. No matter how strong your front door lock is, if someone can get in another way, it won't help.

The Colorado Department of State, in their press release, give a paragraph describing why one shouldn't worry that this may compromise the voting equipment:

Colorado elections include many layers of security. There are two unique passwords for every election equipment component, which are kept in separate places and held by different parties. Passwords can only be used with physical in-person access to a voting system. Under Colorado law, voting equipment must be stored in secure rooms that require a secure ID badge to access. That ID badge creates an access log that tracks who enters a secure area and when. There is 24/7 video camera recording on all election equipment. Clerks are required to maintain restricted access to secure ballot areas, and may only share access information with background-checked individuals. No person may be present in a secure area unless they are authorized to do so or are supervised by an authorized and background-checked employee. There are also strict chain of custody requirements that track when a voting systems component has been accessed and by whom. It is a felony to access voting equipment without authorization.

I have highlighted all that impressive-sounding security: secure rooms, secure ID badge, secure area... So with all that carefully thought-out security protocol, how the F*@& did the BIOS passwords got stored unencrypted on a Microsoft Excel spreadsheet in the first place? Let alone how that Excel file got onto the Department of state website? According to the Colorado Secretary of State Jena Griswold:

Griswold said the mistake was made by a “civil servant” in the Secretary of State’s Office, who no longer works there. “Ultimately, a civil servant made a serious mistake and we're actively working to address it,” Griswold said. “Humans make mistakes.”

Which mistake, Secretary Griswold? The act of compiling of the unencrypted BIOS passwords onto a Microsoft Excel spreadsheet? The act of hiding that tab and leaving it on a Microsoft Excel document meant for sharing with broader audience? The act of uploading that document to the Department's website, free to download to anyone on the web? I am far more interested in answers to that first question, because it says quite a lot about the level of professionalism that underlies the security system of Colorado voting equipment.

What is the job of the Colorado Secretary of State?

The basic mission of the Department of State is to collect, secure, and make accessible a wide variety of public records, ensure the integrity of elections, and enhance commerce.

The Colorado GOP, therefore, wants to know if Secretary Griswold will resign. Her response:

[Republicans in the state House] are the same folks who have spread conspiracies and lies about our election systems over and over and over again," Griswold told Colorado Public Radio. "Ultimately, a civil servant made a serious mistake and we're actively working to address it," Griswold said, adding, "I have faced conspiracy theories from elected Republicans in this state, and I have not been stopped by any of their efforts and I'm going to keep on doing my job."

So that's a no, then. Plus, a nice implication that this whoopsie is also part and parcel of the "conspiracies and lies about our election system".

Is it too late to switch to that system we had the Iraqis use, with the ink-on-the-finger that stains the skin for the following week?

As long as the machines use disk encryption, having the BIOS password doesn’t allow you to log in or tamper with the data. It would allow an attacker to completely blow away the data a little quicker than they could otherwise. No idea if they do use disk encryption. If they don’t that would be a bigger scandal in my book.

I would really, strongly, urge you not too try to extrapolate how a home computer bios configuration works to voting machines. It's bad whenever there is a leak of any kind of course but this is like if there was a leak of the physical key design to the entrance of the polling location that still has armed guards stations 24/7. To make use of these you'd need to know which keys correspond to which machine, have prolonged physical access to the machines, plug a keyboard or some peripheral device into them and then maybe you'd be able to do something unclear.

I'll add to this that BIOS passwords do not provide much security even in the ordinary context without armed guards. In order to do something with a BIOS password, you need physical access to a machine to type it in. But if you have physical access, you can also easily reset the BIOS password by removing a battery. (This would break a seal on the machine, but those seals can also be replaced.) So I don't think this leak of BIOS passwords meaningfully made the election less secure.

I'm still very much opposed to electronic voting, however, because of all the other ways they make voting insecure.

And the people who install or maintain those machines would have access to all that information. A very small conspiracy could hijack voting machines. Slip in a USB, run a program, and it's done. Machines have to be updated and maintained all the time anyways. And it's totally feasible to write a program that infects other USBs plugged into the device: Infect one machine, and then some third unknowing party who maintains the machines ends up infecting more.

It would be very easy to do! How do we know that this isn't being done? We would need a thorough audit of machine votes and record systems, and that's a right-wing Republican dangerous conspiracy that undermines trust in our sacred democracy.

Ok, but how does this relate to the OP? This is true whether or not there's a leak of some specific passwords in a publicly accessible excel document. Somebody has to have access to maintain voting machines and by the nature of maintenance would be able to compromise the thing they're maintaining.

Ehhh, it's not great that these passwords have been disclosed but honestly, it's not the end of the world in this situation, assuming the voting machines are designed intelligently (not a safe thing to assume, I know): if someone has access to enter the BIOS password, they probably already have the kind of access they need to the machine to compromise it in many ways.

Is it any wonder that republicans have trouble trusting the integrity of our election systems when fair-minded professionals like Griswold are in charge of it?

I can't speak to the exact systems they are using, but my laptop from 15 years ago had two levels of BIOS passwords. You could set one (and I did) to prevent booting without the password, and another to actually making changes to the system. Assuming this is similar, I'd bet it's the password to just turn the thing on, not change it.

We don't actually know: why would you assume it's not serious?

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