[Infowarrior] - Fwd: Sequoia Voting Systems screws up, releases its SQL code accidentally

[Richard Forno]

Begin forwarded message:

> From: Rich Kulawiec <rsk at gsp.org>
> Date: October 20, 2009 7:25:21 PM EDT
> To: Dave Farber <dave at farber.net>, Paul Ferguson <fergdawgster at gmail.com 
> >, Richard Forno <rforno at 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
>