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Same company is Vermont election software vendor
By Guy Page
The vendor for Vermont election software offshored part of its work for New Hampshire’s elections to Russian software developers. Although caught in time, the “disaster averted” could have led to falsifying state voter rolls, according to a Politico news story last week.
The vendor, WSD of Connecticut, offshored the work trying to meet a deadline for a New Hampshire voting system. Today, the Vermont Secretary of State’s Office confirmed that WSD is also Vermont’s vendor, and that state officials have been aware of the ‘disaster averted’ since spring.
“WSD is our vendor for our elections management system,” Deputy Secretary of State Lauren Hibbert confirmed to VDC today.
The Politico news story reported several troubling aspects about the flawed core-js software:
- The software was “misconfigured to connect to servers in Russia and the use of open-source code — which is freely available online — overseen by a Russian computer engineer convicted of manslaughter.”
- Also, “A programmer had hard-coded the Ukrainian national anthem into the database, in an apparent gesture of solidarity with Kyiv.” And,
- Hackers could have exploited the issues to surreptitiously edit the state’s voter rolls.
The problem was reported by WSD to the Secretary of State’s office earlier this year, Hibbert said.
“The Vermont Secretary of State’s Office was notified of this issue by our vendor, WSD, in the spring and we met with them and Vermont’s CISO [Editor: Chief Information Security Officer],” Hibbert said.
The use of the open-source code in question was discovered in pre-production, Hibbert said.
“The code where the issue was found is a piece of code on the open market that is used by developers across many different software application types. We have no indication that it was targeted at election management systems,” Hibbert said.
“Additionally, WSD uses industry-leading tools to conduct continuous code reviews in development and production environments. The issue found in the code was found using those industry tools in a pre-production environment. Vermont does not have concerns about the work that WSD is doing for our state,” Hibbert said. “WSD adheres to NIST [National Institute of Standards and Technology] standards and leading practices with regard to DevSecOPS [a framework that integrates security into all phases of the software development lifecycle],” Hibbert said.
This isn’t the first time Vermont’s election software has been called into question. This year’s state primary results were delayed for a day after the Secretary of State’s office reported problems with the reporting software. They were resolved in collaboration with the vendor, the office reported at the time. The election software system is a ‘legacy’ of the Condos administration and is scheduled to be replaced, SOS officials said.
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Categories: Elections
This should be considered proof that elections are not safe as long as software and electronics are involved.
In contrast to the chief of staff in the SOS office’s opinion:
“Bryan Mills, the chief of staff in Vermont’s secretary of state’s office, said Vermont was informed about the outsourcing issue in mid-April, around the time POLITICO first reached out to it. They said they have not “had any concerns“ about the work that WSD Digital is doing and are adhering to supply-chain security practices set by the National Institute of Standards and Technology.”
Yet, Condos gave up ballot chain of custody verficiation to drop boxes (Zuckerbucks!) and the USPS in 2020. Besides, they locked up the dead vote and stuffed the machines with unvalidated ballots in the wee hours of the morning. I don’t care if it happened here or Arizona. My vote is invalidated by fraud – that was never addressed and guess what – Congress punted it – that is why J6 is a Fedsurrection to protect the Corporation. Voter supression? You betcha! No one does it better than the installed regime. See Venezuala or Brazil for more details.
Russia – right on cue – Putin is laughing his butt off and so is Xi. Rug pull incoming.
Psyop. Now that DJT will undoubtedly trounce KH by a margin far too big to rig, it will be, according to “reputable sources”, due to a cyber attack by whom??? Russia Russia Russia, of course. Too bad Putin already “endorsed” KH. 🙂
Funny how all the evidence of cyber theft of the 2020 fiasco (“baseless!”) was mis/dis/malinformation, but now it’s in Politico and the rest of MSM.
Let’s pretend. I purchase accounting software from a vendor. I recommend this software to all my friends, many of whom purchase it. Months later, I get a call from one of those friends, who tells me that her assets have surreptitiously been systematically funneled to some outfit in, oh, I don’t know, let’s say Nigeria. Further, she informs me that the theft was traced back to some malicious code in the same accounting software I recommended, and still use. Quickly, I check my own accounting statements and luckily, nothing is amiss.
So the question is, aside from calling everyone I recommended this software to in order to tell them what happened, what do I do?
I don’t know about you, but the next thing I do is uninstall said accounting software. That seems pretty straightforward to understand, right?
But no, I’m not me. I’m actually the State of Vermont. So what do I do? Well, here it is. Vermont’s official statement: “Vermont does not have concerns about the work that XYZ Company is doing for our state.” Then, “XYZ adheres to NIST [National Institute of Standards and Technology] standards and leading practices with regard to DevSecOPS [a framework that integrates security into all phases of the software development lifecycle].”
A word salad if I ever heard one. But most importantly, it tells me that our wonderful, benevolent, and wise government doesn’t have a care in the world whether XYZ Company is on the up and up.
And yet, NO ONE does the right thing and cancel’s XYZ Company’s contract.
What am I missing here?
Your first two words say it all…. Let’s Pretend.
As condos and now copeland- hanzas assure us nothing is amiss. Let’s pretend the
integrity of Vermont elections is sacrosanct. Nationally, Vermont’s 3 electoral votes matter not- harris will win by a landslide here regardless of the actual vote. What does matter are the state and local offices “decided” and the integrity of those that count the ballots. What matters is the disenfranchisement and apathy of Vermont’s voters, especially browbeaten moderates and conservatives. The 2020 legislature forever ensconced mail-in ballots, and therefore control of the ballot count by the majority party. Next step: IRV ballots, to ensure D/P control for generations.
“What does matter are the state and local offices “decided” and the integrity of those that count the ballots. What matters is the disenfranchisement and apathy of Vermont’s voters, especially browbeaten moderates and conservatives”
Frank, I couldn’t agree more. Disenfranchised? Yes. Certainly. Apathetic? Maybe. But you gave the correct reason. We have indeed been browbeaten. And human nature being what it is (unfortunately), many moderates and conservatives think “Why should I bother? My vote doesn’t matter. I already know the outcome.” But in reality, that’s a self-fulfilling prophecy.
So conservatives stop voting entirely, which only emboldens the radical left even more. Vermont at present is caught in a downward spiraling vortex. We 15%-ers have to keep working to stop the inevitable socialist state from taking over.
Have you ever seen the US map where all the counties who voted conservative are in red and the others are in blue? It’s amazing. Looked at in this way, a good 85% of the country votes conservative, but both coasts (plus Illinois… that’s another story) except for the southeastern coast vote liberal/prog.
I suspect Vermont is the same way. Pretty much red except for Chittenden County, Montpelier, Norwich, and Brattleboro. Unfortunately, there’s no electoral college in the state to offset the excessive effect lefty strongholds have on our elections.
“We have no indications that it was targeted at election management systems”. Do you even know what that means? So, tell we the people of Vermont where our election system actually is. We have internal issues. Check. We’re using paper ballots. Check. We have no official system for poll watchers, nor ballot counter watchers after the polls are closed. Check.
OH, Oh, I almost neglected to mention that the software was/is misconfigured to servers in Russia. Sounds almost like Russiagate (which they falsely blamed President Trump for). No, nothing to see hear. And lets just throw in Ukraine, that’s where out trusty politicians have sent trillions of our tax dollars. Why was the public not notified in spring when the SOS office became aware? Not public information, or we’ll just sweep it under the rug, and hope they don’t find out about it?
Why are we doing business that with vendors that send contracts overseas to people we claim to be enemies? No oversight? Sheesh, perhaps we should have oversight. Who would we Trust? Let SOS oversight for themselves? Probably not. Gee Whiz, perhaps our Marxist legislature? Nah, think we should pass there as well.
We have serious election issues in Vermont, and they should be addressed. Therre needs to be more transparency with the people, you know, the ones that vote, and pay the salaries, and taxes. Time that the government heels back to where they were intentionally meant to be, and to serve the people.
Poll workers have always given me the creeps.
I think the distinction here is between “poll workers”, who hold signs and badger you outside your place of voting, and “poll watchers”, who (in theory anyway) work inside your voting place to verify and validate the count after voting is complete.
I’ve been saying all year the President has already been chosen. Makes me wonder if Congress has as well
It’s all one big club and we ain’t in it !!! We are all called conspiracy theorists if we question anything election related. It’s time for the corrupt system to fall !
Only way the corrupt system will fall is we topple it…by force. Armed force. Only option left. Yep, I said it.
Come on, we have been told that the election machines are safe and secure and they would never be hacked or any other shenanigans to win it’s all legit, yeah if you believe that I have a bridge I want to sell !!
Wake up people, do you like the condition of the state, with its taxes, and debt that you and your kids will be on the hook for, Let’s roll in the nation’s debt, that’s your
responsibility also……….. you vote for these clowns in year after year and things only get worse !!
Desperate people do desperate things, the left is desperate to stay in power, you need to make changes, and make changes happen now………………………
We need to return to hand-counted paper ballots so we can have confidence in our elections.
They have known about this since April and we’re just hearing about it? Someone one said something somewhere and the decided they needed to get ahead of it and say something now before it was exposed somewhere else. This is how transparency works in Vermont!!!
Let’s not have a knee-jerk reaction to this. Surely we have so time to do validation testing before Election Day. We can Alvis audit results carefully.
Let’s make decisions based on empirical fact, not on a hypothesis of what might go wrong.