Sequoia Voting Systems screws up, releases its SQL code accidentally

[David Farber <dave () farber net>]

Begin forwarded message:

From: Rich Kulawiec <rsk () gsp org>
Date: October 20, 2009 7:25:21 PM EDT
To: Dave Farber <dave () farber net>, Paul Ferguson  
<fergdawgster () gmail com>, Richard Forno <rforno () infowarrior org>
Subject: Sequoia Voting Systems screws up, releases its SQL code  
accidentally

The gist may be found here:

        Sequoia Voting Systems hacks self in foot
        http://www.dailykos.com/storyonly/2009/10/20/795343/-Sequoia-Voting-Systems-hacks-self-in-foot

which quotes a message that appears to have transited the Open Voting
Consortium (OVC) mailing list earlier today.  That message reads in  
part:

        Folks, you'll love this.

        Sequoia blew it on a public records response.  We (basically
        EDA) have election databases from Riverside County that Sequoia
        insisted on "redacting" first, for which we paid cold cash.
        They appear instead to have just vandalized the data as valid
        databases by stripping the MS-SQL header data off, assuming that
        would stop us cold.

        They were wrong.

        The Linux "strings" command was able to peel it apart.        Nedit was
        able to digest 800meg text files.  What was revealed was thousands
        of lines of MS-SQL source code that appears to control or at
        least influence the logical flow of the election, in violation
        of a bunch of clauses in the FEC voting system rulebook banning
        interpreted code, machine modified code and mandating hash checks
        of voting system code.

        I've got it all organized for commentary and download in wiki
        form at:

        http://studysequoia.wikispaces.com/

And sure enough that wiki is live and running, and I'll bet that as I
type this, Sequoia's lawyers are frantically trying to shut it  
down...but
it's too late.  By now, there are dozens if not hundreds of copies of  
that
code all over the world, so they're powerless to stop the analysis  
that's
already started.  (And while I was typing this, apparently Slashdot  
picked
up the story, so make that "thousands of copies".)

The lesson for Sequoia: never underestimate the abilities of someone  
who's
read ALL of section 1 of the Unix manual.

---Rsk





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