Professor and Election Expert J. Halderman Hacks into Dominion Voting Machine in Court USING ONLY A PEN
In June, 2023, the Federal District Court for the Northern District of Georgia unsealed the 96-page Halderman Report – the Security Analysis of Georgia’s ImageCast X Ballot Marking Devices.
Georgia Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger had been hiding this report from the public for two years.
University of Michigan Professor of Computer Science and Engineering J. Alex Halderman and Security Researcher and Assistant Professor at Auburn University Drew Sringall collaborated on the report where they discovered many exploitable vulnerabilities in the Dominion Voting Systems’ ImageCast X system.
Far-left Judge Amy Totenberg sealed and covered up the results of the investigation of Dominion voting machines in Georgia and sat on the report until this week.
Local Reporter Describes Election Expert Halderman Breaking into Dominion Voting Machine
The report confirmed that votes can be altered in the Dominion voting machines. In fact, the report revealed that the Dominion software is vulnerable and can be hacked.
Following its release, VoterGA founder Garland Favorito joined Steve Bannon on The War Room to discuss the findings from the explosive report.
Trump-hating Secretary of State Raffensperger hid this information from the public until 2023. Why was that?
Here is a copy of the Halderman Report released in June.
Halderman Report on Georgi… by Jim Hoft
Professor Halderman wrote about his findings in a blog post on Wednesday.
Back in September 2020, the Court granted the Curling Plaintiffs access to one of Georgia’s touchscreen ballot marking devices (BMDs) so that they could assess its security. Drew and I extensively tested the machine, and we discovered vulnerabilities in nearly every part of the system that is exposed to potential attackers. The most critical problem we found is an arbitrary-code-execution vulnerability that can be exploited to spread malware from a county’s central election management system (EMS) to every BMD in the jurisdiction. This makes it possible to attack the BMDs at scale, over a wide area, without needing physical access to any of them.
Our report explains how attackers could exploit the flaws we found to change votes or potentially even affect election outcomes in Georgia, including how they could defeat the technical and procedural protections the state has in place. While we are not aware of any evidence that the vulnerabilities have been exploited to change votes in past elections, without more precautions and mitigations, there is a serious risk that they will be exploited in the future.
After the release of the report Professor Halderman tweeted out that Georgia Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger will not install Dominion’s security patches before the 2024 election.
Now this…
On Friday, in a Federal Court In Atlanta, Georgia J. Alex Halderman was able to HACK A DOMINION VOTING TABULATOR In Front Of U.S. District Judge Amy Totenberg in the courtroom!
Halderman USED ONLY A PEN TO CHANGE VOTE TOTALS!
This is part of a long running lawsuit by election integrity activists set as a bench trial.
The plaintiff’s seek to remove that they say are insecure voting machines in Georgia in favor of secure paper ballots.
BREAKING: In A Federal Court In Atlanta Georgia On Friday J. Alex Halderman (@jhalderm) Was Able To HACK A DOMINION VOTING TABULATOR In Front Of U.S. District Judge Amy Totenberg USING ONLY A PEN TO CHANGE VOTE TOTALS! This Is Part Of A Long Running Lawsuit By Election Integrity… pic.twitter.com/nCSgmINTet
— John Basham (@JohnBasham) January 20, 2024
But there was much more revealed in Judge Totenberg’s courtroom regarding the vulnerabilities of these electronic voting devices.
To summarize Part 1, Dr. Halderman was able to use a simple BIC ball-point pen to reboot a Dominion ICX BMD by simply inserting it into the power button on the back of the machine and hold it down for five seconds. This rebooted the machine into Safe Mode and allowed Super User access, granting the attacker almost unlimited abilities to manipulate data on the machine.
Professor Halderman was also able to use a Smart card purchased for $10 online and a $20 USB Smart card Reader from Amazon to program voter cards that could be used over and over again, county-wide. He also made a poll-worker card and, most importantly, a technician card that would also grant “Super User access.”
We learned that commands to manipulate the Dominion ICX BMD could be automated – simply insert the card and it will do the rest. Further, nothing was needed that wasn’t public information to complete the programming.
These cards would require some expertise to program, but once the counterfeit cards are made, anyone could insert it into the machine and exploit the vulnerability automatically.
Here again is the transcript from the court hearing and Professor Halderman’s testimony.
But there has to be a way that these attacks could be detected, right? Not necessarily.
No Evidence of Exploitation
Dr. Halderman then demonstrated how he can delete portions of the system’s audit log in order to delete any evidence that he had accessed and modified the system. Dr. Halderman testified:
Professor Halderman: “So now I’m back in the technician menu…and what I’m going to do is I’m going to go to the file manager and open the ICX’s audit log file. This is one of the log files that the machine creates, and I’m going to open it with the on-screen text editor.
What I have just done with the technician card is I have loaded this technician card with the automated commands that I want to run in a way that they appear in the audit log. But I’m going to open the audit log and edit it with the on-screen text editor.
I’m actually going to highlight a portion that came from my card and hit the cut button to move it to the machine’s clipboard. And I’m going to save the audit log just to show you that I can delete portions of the audit log with the on-screen text editor.
Dr. Halderman described it as deleting log entries “that would otherwise be evidence of some malfeasance.” He can cover his tracks from anyone being able to discover the access he had and what he was able to do to the Dominion ICX BMDs.
Seemingly for demonstrative purposes, Dr. Halderman performed each step manually, but he testified that it can be done “programmatically”. Insert the card and let the machine do the rest. He also testified that he can quickly insert a command that would “take the other automated commands out of the log file that were copied from my technician card and execute them.”
The Bash Bunny
Next, Dr. Halderman demonstrated perhaps the most serious of the vulnerability exploits, in this author’s opinion, at least.
The following demonstration was not done live in court, but rather through a continuous video recording utilizing the Fulton County Dominion ICX BMD (ballot marking device). This video was played live before the court.
The “attacker” in the video reached behind the printer that accompanies the Dominion ICX BMD and unplugged the USB cable and plugged in what is called a Bash Bunny. The device looks like a big USB stick, but with the Bash Bunny, the “attacker” is “able to load it with a sequence of commands that it will then send to the device as if it were a keyboard.”
“…The Bash Bunny will start driving the device, and you can see that it is moving through a sequence of things on the screen. This is the USB device controlling it.
And it is going to go through and modify settings, as I describe in the report. It is going to then open a terminal, get superuser access, and take steps to install malicious software that is stored on that same USB device.
Now, the USB — the malicious software is a version of the ICX application that we have — we have extracted from the machine and slightly modified it to add some malicious functionality. And the Bash Bunny device is installing the malicious version of the application on the machine and replacing the version that regularly would function.”
All of this was done automatically. The “attacker” simply plugged in the USB device and it completed its installation and replacement of the software in less than two minutes. Once the Bash Bunny is programmed, there is no special skill required to initiate this attack.
The Bash Bunny costs about $100 and can be utilized without removing or tampering with any of the seals on the Dominion ICX BMD. As Dr. Halderman testified, an “attacker” can utilize a cable coming off the printer to connect the Bash Bunny rather than removing a seal and connecting it directly to the Dominion ICX BMD. That connection is not typically sealed, according to Dr. Halderman.
During the testimony of Dr. Halderman, attorney David Oles was not permitted to ask any questions of Dr. Halderman. Oles represents co-plaintiff Ricardo Davis of VoterGA.org. Yesterday, The Gateway Pundit reported that Oles was able to get proffers submitted to the court regarding Dr. Halderman and Dr. Philip Stark’s testimonies.
The trial that includes this explosive testimony and live demonstration is currently underway in the Northern District of Georgia in Judge Amy Totenberg’s court.
