Facebook continues to give me grief. From http://money.cnn.com/2018/01/04/technology/mark-zuckerberg-2018-goal/index.html I have come to find out that Mark Zuckerburg is feeling a tad bit of regret for all the bovine manure Facebook has been putting people through. As for me, I recently began posting to various election reform groups about the up and coming Federal election summit currently scheduled for January 10^th. Shortly thereafter, I discovered someone had apparently marked one of my posts as spam. I found myself unable to post anything on Facebook for the rest of the day.

The following day, I found I was able to post some video links to “Let’s Build a New Allentown Together” Facebook group that I admin. But I am not alone. There seems to be an organized attempt by unknown actors to hack into Facebook accounts of various elected officials, political activists, and other well followed accounts. Please be careful out there.

And finally, I wish to alert the reader that I have formed a Facebook group called REALCHANGE.us for the purpose to give voice to those who may have something to say and desire to give feedback on what is posted here. The address is https://www.facebook.com/groups/realchangedotus . Please contact me and let me know if you may be interested in joining and making constructive posts. Thank you.

Greetings all. I have decided to update the “Protect yourself” post below to impart new and relevant information while the Republican regime is threatening to end net neutrality and murder millions of people by kicking them off of health care, and the DNC plots to remove all the good that Bernie Sanders has done. More recent news will be near the top, while updated actionable items will follow below.

To begin, here is a relatively neutral article that explains the concept of Net Neutrality, https://www.consumerreports.org/net-neutrality/here-s-the-fcc-plan-to-undo-net-neutrality/

The current head of the FCC, Ajit Pai, formerly a corporate lawyer for Verizon, wants to tear down Net Neutrality to please Trump and his minions. If anyone would like to send him any thoughts on the matter,  his address is 4868 Old Dominion drive, Arlington VA 22207-2743 and his home phone number is 703-533-7359. Otherwise, there is a day of nationwide protests being organized by http://verizonprotests.com/ on December 7^th at various locations. Please consider searching for and attending a protest near you, as this will present you with the opportunity to network locally with like minded people. But wait, there’s more. You could also consider emailing the members of the FCC. Below, are the FCC members and their email addresses:

• Ajit Pai – Ajit.Pai@fcc.gov
• Mignon Clyburn – Mignon.Clyburn@fcc.gov
• Michael O’Rielly – Mike.ORielly@fcc.gov
• Brendan Carr – Brendan.Carr@fcc.gov
• Jessica Rosenworcel – Jessica.Rosenworcel@fcc.gov

For whatever it’s worth, there are also petition drives at https://petitions.whitehouse.gov/petition/do-not-repeal-net-neutrality and https://www.savetheinternet.com/sti-home

Petitions work when there are many signatures, please consider signing those above. Also, please consider contacting your Senators and Representatives to voice your concerns about Net Neutrality, the current tax plan, Trump’s threat to derail the Russian investigation, ect. You can find your Senator here https://www.senate.gov/general/contact_information/senators_cfm.cfm?OrderBy=state

And your Representatives can be found here  https://www.house.gov/representatives/find-your-representative

On Friday December 8th, the unity commission of the DNC will meet for one last time. More information can be found here http://my.democrats.org/page/s/unity-reform-commission-washington-dc-

If I can, I hope to attend. More information on the fifth Unity Commission meeting:

When: December 8-9, 2017
Where: Marriott Wardman Park
Marriott Wardman Park
Washington, D.C. 20008

Also, please consider filling out this survey for the Unity commission, http://my.democrats.org/page/s/2017-unity-survey

https://democraticautopsy.org/ discusses what happened with the DNC by issuing an autopsy report, which can be downloaded from that location. After reading it, it really amazes me that the DNC still has so much corruption that they are very little better than the Republican Party teaming up with American Nazi’s. Please consider using the above information to tell Tom Perez and the other crooks how you really feel.

Part 2:

Glen Greenwald is a reporter for The Guardian, a large daily newspaper based in the United Kingdom. . He is the reporter that Edward Snowden turned to in order to leak out all Edward knew about the NSA vacuum cleaner from when he formerly worked as a technical assistant for the CIA, and as a subcontractor at the NSA for both Dell, and Booz Allen Hamilton. This link should provide the gist of what Glen reports, http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/series/glenn-greenwald-security-liberty

Information on PRISM can be found at http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2013/jun/06/us-tech-giants-nsa-data

Want to see some other links related tp PRISM? Check these out.

http://prism.arl.army.mil
http://prism.ogden.disa.mil
http://prism.sd.spawar.navy.mil
http://prism.nrlssc.navy.mil
Most likely they won’t work, but hey.

So, what can be done about this, besides complaining to your elected officials? You can check out https://prism-break.org/en/all/ which lists various programs and platforms that empower individual users and groups to communicate in a securable manner. Some of the better known options are discussed below:

TOR, or The Onion Router, is a popular method of surfing anonymously by appearing to have a constantly changing IP, or Internet Protocol address. However, not all web sites and services work with TOR. Also, there are people who set up malicious exit nodes that can sniff all incoming and outgoing traffic on there exit node. More information can be found at https://www.torproject.org/

Tails is a live, bootable DVD which can be installed to a usb flash drive. Using Tails, it allows you to use the internet anonymously using both TOR and I2P and leaving no trace on the host machine while using state of the art cryptography. This open source project has a very active development cycle, and comes out with a new version roughly every couple of months. It can be found at https://tails.boum.org/

GnuPG, or GNU Privacy Guard, is a free, cross platform, and open source replacement for PGP or Pretty Good Privacy. Invented in 1991 by Phil Zimmerman, PGP is still the standard used throughout the world for encrypting email. More information can be found at http://www.gnupg.org/ or for PGP, http://www.pgp.com Please be aware that PGP is now owned by Symantec, of Norton Antivirus fame.

Veracrypt is a free, cross platform, and source code available software package that can encrypt files on your computer, and offers full disk encryption. It is intended to replace Truecrypt and can even handle and convert Truecrypt volumes. More information can be found at https://www.veracrypt.fr/en/Home.html

Microsoft Skype has also been named, along with other video chat and IM or Instant Messaging programs. For a free, cross platform, securable, and open sourced chat and video chat application try https://jitsi.org/ Jitsi uses an encryption algorithm called ZRTP. Developed by Phil Zimmerman, the same fellow who invented PGP back in 1991, this is the actual method used to encrypt video chats.

OpenVPN is an open source software application that implements virtual private network techniques for creating secure point-to-point or site-to-site connections in routed or bridged configurations and remote access facilities. It is capable of traversing network address translation (NAT) and firewalls Considering what we DON’T know about the NSA’s spying on American citizens, I would suggest not trusting any US based providers as well as doing your homework on the others. Some links to check out are as follows:

http://torrentfreak.com/vpn-services-that-take-your-anonymity-seriously-2013-edition-130302/

http://netforbeginners.about.com/od/readerpicks/tp/The-Best-VPN-Service-Providers.htm and

http://www.google.com/search?q=list+of+VPN+providers&sourceid=ie7&rls=com.microsoft:en-US:IE-Address&ie=&oe=

If you are using the Android operating system on your smartphone, look on Google Play for apps by “The Guardian Project” that could help make your online activities a little more secure. If you are using Blackberries, they offer some security natively for a little while longer. Apple and Windows mobile users, SOL. Sorry. All phones have a hidden software package called CarrierIQ, which is not easily removable. This is spyware installed by the major carriers on over 150 million smartphones throughout the world. More information can be found at http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Carrier_IQ

Dropbox was specifically named as one of the internet companies that are in the PRISM program. As with other cloud providers, when anything is uploaded to dropbox, or any other cloud provider, the user forfeits any and all rights to any data uploaded. More info can be found here, https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2012/10/governments-attack-cloud-computing A free alternative has been created by Bittorrent labs called Resilio. This application allows the user to sync all files within a pre selected set of folders across 2 or more computers. This application does not involve a cloud or hosting provider of any kind. More information can be found at https://www.resilio.com/

When you are on Facebook, Instagram, or wherever type of forum you may encounter, read up on how they can be manipulated here https://cryptome.org/2012/07/gent-forum-spies.htm Once you read this, you will be forewarned, forearmed and knowledgeable on how to spot trolls and manipulations in almost any forum or Facebook post.

Below, I post a few links that will allow the reader to explore their options further. Enjoy:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/NSAKEY

http://yro.slashdot.org/story/13/06/12/1424238/keeping-your-data-private-from-the-nsa-and-everyone-else

http://yro.slashdot.org/story/13/06/13/1632210/ask-slashdot-how-to-bypass-govt-spying-on-cellphones

http://prism-break.org/

And last, consider supporting this group because they fight for all of us, https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2013/06/what-we-need-to-know-about-prism

The best tool out there that you can use to secure your internet usage is COMMON SENSE. Since asking spooks to be honest in today’s America is a sad joke, you should safely assume everything you do on the internet is monitored, logged, and analyzed in triplicate, at 7 different locations simultaneously, with off-site backups 12 times a day, and twice as often on Sunday, all on the NSA’s watch board by Monday. I can’t stress this enough, DO YOUR HOMEWORK when it comes to using any internet security product. Stay safe out there, and please don’t do anything stupid. Because I will not be held responsible when you get caught. Having said that, I believe if everyone using the Internets uses these tools with common sense, the NSA’s snoopers and vacuums would bog down under the weight of it all. Have a nice day.

On Wednesday November 30th, I accompanied a group of registered voters to perform a recount of precinct votes at the Lehigh County board of elections, and was quite surprised by what I found in the back room. A Dell server, vintage 2006 running Windows Server 2000 Service Pack 0. A company called ElectionIQ manages the database on this server. As of 12-12-2016 8:39 pm,  http://electioniq.net/about-us/  has Lorum Ipsum, or scrambled text on the bottom of the page, what a nice touch. I was informed this machine has never been updated and is not connected to the internet. Imagine that. Later on it was revealed that this machine does connect using a Microsoft ssh key, to the department of state in Harrisburg. Having becoming familiar with our state IT infrastructure does not give me a lot of confidence. In February of 2004, it was revealed by Microsoft that portions of the source code to Windows 2000 was stolen and released by still unknown parties. That source code can be found on TPB and other such sites. Windows 2000 SP0 also has support for raw sockets. basic information on raw sockets can be found at https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Raw_socket  Using packet crafting tools with raw sockets makes for an interesting pentesting experience. Windows 2000 reached its end of life in July 2010. And the vulnerabilities still continue to pile up.

Looking carefully on the lower right hand corner of this first picture, it appears there are 3 network connection icons, one of which is disconnected. Also, for a computer not connected to the internet, why is there a program called “AVServer” running? This computer is ripe for intrusion. It’s a good thing I wear a white hat.

Looking at the above picture, you can see other programs installed on the desktop such as “Nero” , “Adobe Audition”, and “Adobe Acrobat” Each program or process running on a server could, in theory, be exploited to gain control of a system. It is common consensus among IT professionals that, when running any kind of server, that only ESSENTIAL programs be installed and permitted to run.

This picture shows, on the lower left hand corner, an Ethernet dongle connected to the diebold machine.

Here is a better view of the network dongle.

This last picture displays the two boxes found on top of the Dell server. The top, white box appears to be a 3com Ethernet switch or hub. The black box below it appears to be a “Digi PortServer 2b” . When I asked about these boxes, I was told the top one was just for machines and the bottom was for absentees. Full disclosure here. In my examination last Wednesday, the only thing I touched was my smartphone.

These videos below were taken from the recount at Lehigh county PA on Wednesday.

the server explanation = https://youtu.be/xbkWg5LbsyM

the server explanation part 2 = https://youtu.be/zh2Ch24A-is

get up screenshot = https://youtu.be/lwMEjSsJHRI

Roberts contribution – https://youtu.be/sjiXDz8Ix4w

Around the 36 minute mark, it is revealed that usb flash drives are used to transfer databases. Now, imagine for a moment you are walking along past the water cooler. You look down and, “Oh Joy” a USB stick is laying on the ground. What is your first thought that comes to mind? Porn? You want to plug it into a computer?. It’s perfectly natural to do that. But think about this. Most usb drives have a file in there root directory structure called “autorun.inf” and most windows operating systems, by default, will AUTOMATICALLY execute any instructions listed in autorun.imf, including any malware instructions listed. USB drives are a classic point of intrusion. First, establish a position on a host. Then call out to the internet for reinforcement viruses. Most computer virus infections out there are “blended” threats composing of droppers, payloads, and finally rootkits. Once a rootkit is installed, total pwnage has occurred and most drastic measures need to be taken to regain control of the infected pc.

But wait, there’s more.

Not all usb flash drives are created equally. Featured recently on Hackaday, http://hackaday.com/2015/03/11/killer-usb-drive-is-designed-to-fry-laptops/  This Killer usb drive will fry any computer it connects to. So please think about that the next time you find a usb flash drive.

The meeting with the Lehigh County Board of Elections  occurred on November 30th. Ali Frick presented to the board the importance of a forensic audit. Despite the server running Windows Server 2000 service pack 0, and there use of Microsoft ssh keys, they denied the audit. Video link of the Lehigh County board of elections is below.

https://youtu.be/CFgzid-MkHY

On Monday December 12 2016, Judge Paul S. Diamond issues a 31 page order detailing her denial of Jill Stein’s petition. The link is here, https://www.scribd.com/document/333985717/Pennsylvania-Order#from_embed  But there is so much wrong with that decision, it will take another post to count the ways.

And now, the piece de resistance, is this little gem from the PA Department of State. Following this link,  http://www.dos.pa.gov/VotingElections/Documents/Voting%20Systems/Conditions/AccuVote%20TSX%20w%20Assure.pdf will lead the reader to download and / or open a pdf that describes what the PaDOS mandates for machines that sets out the most recent conditions for Pennsylvania’s certification of the AccuVote TSX machines and GEMS central tabulator software, which Lehigh County uses.

One more thing. A server admin has to defend his domains 24/7. Pwnage and downtime are not options. The advance persistent threat, or APT, only has to score once. Therefore, time and tide always favor the attacker. To defend against such attackers requires eternal vigilance. In closing, I will quote from Montgomery Scott “The more you overthink the plumbing, the easier it is to clog it up”

More to come soon. I will be updating this at least several times in the near future.