Permission to reprint granted, and my sincere thanks, to www.blackboxvoting.org.
Posted on Thursday, May 11, 2006 – 12:34 pm, by Bev Harris of www.blackboxvoting.org.
Due to the nature of this report it is distributed in two different versions. Details of the attack are only in the restricted distribution version considered to be confidential. Fewer than 50 words have been redacted in the version below.
Overview
Click “more” for link to full report
Note: Please refrain from speculation or public discussion of inappropriate technical details.
This document describes several security issues with the Diebold electronic voting terminals TSx and TS6. These touch-pad terminals are widely used in US and Canadian elections and are among the most widely used touch pad voting systems in North America. Several vulnerabilities are described in this report.
One of them, however, seems to enable a malicious person to compromise the equipment even years before actually using the exploit, possibly leaving the voting terminal incurably compromised.
These architectural defects are not in the election-processing system itself. However, they compromise the underlying platform and therefore cast a serious question over the integrity of the vote. These exploits can be used to affect the trustworthiness of the system or to selectively disenfranchise groups of voters through denial of service.
http://www.blackboxvoting.org/BBVtsxstudy.pdf
Critical Security Alert: Diebold TSx and TS6 voting systems
by Harri Hursti, for Black Box Voting, Inc.
Three-layer architecture, 3 security problems
Each can stand alone or combine for 3-layer offense in depth
As an oversimplification, the systems in question have three major software layers: boot loader, operating system and application program. As appropriate for current designs, the first two layers should contain all hardware specific implementations and modifications, while the application layer should access the hardware – the touch pad, memory card, the network etc. – only via services and functions provided by the operating system and therefore be independent of the hardware design. Whether the architecture in question follows these basic guidelines is unknown.
Based on publicly available documentation, source code excerpts and testing performed with the system, there seem to be several backdoors to the system which are unacceptable from a security point of view. These backdoors exist in each of these three layers and they allow the system to be modified in extremely flexible ways without even basic levels of security involved.
In the worst case scenario, the architectural weaknesses incorporated in these voting terminals allow a sophisticated attacker to develop an “offense in depth” approach in which each compromised layer will also become the guardian against clean-up efforts in the other layers. This kind of deep attack is extremely persistent and it is noteworthy that the layers can conceal the contamination very effectively should the attacker wish that. A quite natural strategy in these types of situations is to penetrate, modify and make everything look normal.
Well documented viral attacks exist in similar systems deploying interception and falsification of hash-code calculations used to verify integrity in the higher application levels to avoid detection. The three-level attack is the worst possible attack. However, each layer can also be used to deploy a stand-alone attack. The TSx systems examined appear to offer opportunities for the three-level attack as well as the stand-alone attacks.
It is important to understand that these attacks are permanent in nature, surviving through the election cycles. Therefore, the contamination can happen at any point of the device’s life cycle and remain active and undetected from the point of contamination on through multiple election cycles and even software upgrade cycles.
Here is a rough analogy:
- The application can be imagined as written instructions on a paper. If it is possible to replace these instructions, as it indeed seems, then the attacker can do whatever he wishes as long as the instructions are used.
- The operating system is the man reading the instructions. If he can be brainwashed according to the wishes of the attacker, then even correct instructions on the paper solve nothing. The man can decide to selectively do something different than the instructions. New paper instructions come and go, and the attacker can decide which instructions to follow because the operating system itself is under his control.
- The boot loader is the supreme entity that creates the man, the world and everything in it. In addition to creating, the boot loader also defines what is allowed in the world and delegates part of that responsibility to the operating system. If the attacker can replace the boot loader, trying to change the paper instructions or the man reading them does not work. The supreme entity will always have the power to replace the man with his own favorite, or perhaps he just modifies the man’s eyes and ears: Every time the man sees yellow, the supreme being makes him think he is seeing brown. The supreme entity can give the man two heads and a secret magic word to trigger switching the heads.
In the world of the Diebold touch-screen voting terminals, all of these attacks look possible.
The instructions (applications and files) can be changed. The man reading the files (Windows CE Operating System and the libraries) can be changed. Or the supreme entity (boot loader) can be changed, giving total control over the operating system and the files even if they are “clean software.”
Specific conceptual information is contained in the report, with details and filenames in the high-security version which is being delivered under cryptographic and/or personal signature controls to the EAC, Diebold CEO Tom Swidarski and CERT.
- Boot loader reflashing
- Operating system reflashing
- Selective file replacement
In addition, the casing of the TSx machines lack basic seals and security, and within the casing additional exploitations are found.
Conclusions and Recommendations
Because there is no way of having chain of custody or audit trail for machines, the machines need to be reflashed with a known good version (assessing the risks potentially inherited). Ideally this should be done by the proper governmental authorities rather than being outsourced.
After that, extensive chain of custody management has to be established to make sure that machines do not potentially get recontaminated. Less than five minutes is required for contamination.
The bootloader needs to be re-engineered.
The cases need to be properly and permanently sealed.
Further study is warranted around these issues and others in the May 15, 2006 Supplemental Report for the Emery County TSx study.
While these flaws in design are not in the vote-processing system itself, they potentially seriously compromise election security. It would be helpful to learn how existing oversight processes have failed to identify this threat.
A secondary report will be released on May 15, 2006. This report contains approximately 12 other areas of secondary concern to the problems described in this initial report.
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I’d like to add that this is the jackpot folks – undeniable evidence, quickly being embraced by the scientific community, of an immediate threat to elections in this country.
John
