Keynote: Who cares about Democracy? by Vanessa Teague
The techniques for varifying electronic elections are probably to difficult for real voters to use.
The ones that have been deployed have lots of problems
Complex maths for end-to-end varifiable elections – people can query their votes to varify it was recorded – votes are safely mixed so others can’t check.
Swisspost/Scytl System – 2 bugs. One in the shuffling, one in decryption proof
End-to-end verifiable elections: limitations and criticism
Users need to do a lot of careful work to verify
If you don’t do it properly you can be tricked
You can ( usually ) prove how you voted
Though not always, and usually not in a polling-place system
Verification requires expertise
Subtle bugs can undermine security properties
What does all this have to do with NSW iVote?
Used Closed source software
Some software available under NDA afterwards
Admitted it was affected by the first Swiss bug. This was when early voting was occuring
Also so said 2nd Swiss bug wasn’t relevant.
After code was available they found it was relevant, a patch had been applied but it didn’t fix the problem
NSW law for election software is all about penalties for releasing information on problems.
Victoria has passed a bill that allows elections to be conducted via any method which is aimed at introducing electronic voting in future elections
Electronic Counting of Paper Records
Keynote: Who cares about Democracy? by Vanessa TeagueVarious areas have auditing software that runs against votes
This only works on FPTP elections, not Instant-runoff elelctions
Created some auditing software what should work, this was testing using some votes in San Francisco elections
A sample of ballots is taken and the physical ballot should match what the electronic one said it is.
Australian Senate vote
Auditing not done, since not mandated in law
What can we do
Swiss has laws around transparency, privacy and varivication
NSW Internet voting laws is orientated around protecting the vendors by keeping the code secret
California has laws about Auditing
Australian Senate scrutineering rules say nothing about computerised scanning and auting
Aus Should
Must be a meaningful statistical audit of the paper ballots
with meaningful observation by scrutineers
In Summary
Varifiable e-voting at polling place is feasible
over the Internet is an unsolved problem
The Senate count at present provides no evidence of accuracy
but would if a rigorous statistical audit is mandated
How else to use verifiable voting technology?
Crowsourcing amendments to legislation with a chance to vote up or down
Open input into parliamentary quesions
A version for teenagers to practice debating what they choose
You startups founder has left. He has wipped out all his computer. Now your Cloudprovider is threatening to lock you out unless you authenticate using 2FA
Hopefully in the password store
Or perhaps they no longer work
Contact Helpdesk, Account Manager, Lawyer, Social Media (usually the bigger you are and the more you pay the better you chance)
Sore everything centrally. How do you audit that? , regularly?
Scenario 5
A relative dies. You first step is to login to all their accounts work out what should be kept.
This will take months not years. Sometimes you will only find out the account exists when they email you that your account is about to expire.
Personal Observations
You will not have access to their cellphone
or probably not past the lock screen
Anything they told you that was obvious you will forget
You will not have access to the password store
You may have access to saved passwords in browser
Maybe you need to optimise for family can access stuff not complete lockdown.
Physical notebook with passwords
Consider in advance how you will recover if your 2FA device breaks
How will you convince a helpdesk person that you are you?
Personal Mitigations
Kawaiicon 2019 ” How can I help you” Talk by Laura Bell
You Shall Not Pass by Peter Burnett
Moodle is an open souce Learning Management System.
Legacy System
First developed in 1997
Open Sourced in 2001
New Code is good quality, older stuff not as much
Efforts to improve password policy
Password policy was a bit antiquated
Best policies come from NIST, 2018 version is good.
Don’t force a pattern, Check for compromised passwords, Check for dictionary based and identifying passwords
Look at the “Have I been Pwned” API – takes first 5 characters of the sha of the password.
Dictionary checks – Top 10,000 English words might be enough
Indentifying information – Birthdays, names, cities are things to watch for. Name of the company.
Released as an open source plugin for Moodle
A look at the Authentication Flow
Natively supported LDAP etc.
Lots of extra plugins impliment other methods
Had to put MFA in when people using plugins. Difficult to mix
Added extra hook on “account related” actions, they would check for MFA etc.
Required a bit of work to get merged in.
Implementing MFA
MFA is a superset of 2FA implimentations
Had to do extensible platform
Traditional: TOTP, Email
Non-Traditional: IP verification, Authentication type (might already have MFA)
Design considerations – Keep secure but impact people as little as possible.
Different users: Not required, Optional, Forced Upon . So built in the ability for a range of use across platform.
Learnings
Anything can be used as a factor
delicate balance between secure and usable
When designing, paranoid is the right mindset
Give the least information possible to allow a legit user to authenticate
What can the attacker do if this factor is compromised?
Facebook, Dynamite, Uber, Bombs, and You – Lana Brindley
Herman Hollerith
Created the punch card, introduced for the 1890 US Census
Hollerith leased companies to other people
Hollerith machines and infrastructure used by many Census in Europe.
Countries with better census infrastructure using Hollerith machines tended to use have higher deather rate in The Holocaust
Alfred Nobel
Invented Dynamite and ran weapons company
Otto Hahn
Invented Nuclear Fission
Eugenics
33 US states have sterilization programmes in place
65,000 Americans sterilized as part of programmes
WHO was created as a result.
Thalidomide
Over-the-counter morning sickness treatment
Caused birth defeats
FDA strengthened
Unintended consequences of technology, result was stronger regulation
Volkswagen emission and Uber created Greyball – Volkswagen engineers went to jail, Uber engineers didn’t
Here are some IT innovations that didn’t lead to real change
Medical Devices
Therac-25 was a 1980s machine used for treating cancer with radiation
Control software had race condition that gave people huge radiation overloads
Drive by Wire for Cars
Luxus ES350 sudden acceleration
Toyota replaced floor mats, not software
Car accelerator stuck at full speed and brakes not working
No single cause ever identified
Deep Fake Videos
Killer Robots
South Korean Universities came under pressure to stop research, said they had stopped but not confirmed.
Chinese Surveillance
Checkpoints all though the city, average citizen goes though them many times per day and have phoned scanned, other checks.
Cameras with facial recognition everywhere
Western Surveillance – Palantir and other companies installing elsewhere
Boeing Software – 373 Max
Bad technology should have consequences and until it does people have to avoid things themselves as much as possible and put pressure on governments and companies
The Internet: Protecting Our Democratic Lifeline by Brett Sheffield
Lost of ways technology can protect us (Tor etc) and at the same time plenty of ways technology works against our prevacy.
The UN Declaration of Human Rights Australia is the only major country without a bill of rights.
Ways to contribute – They Work for you type websites – Protesting – Whistleblowers
Democracy Under Threat – Governments blocking the Internet – Netblocks.org – Police harrass journalists (AFC raids ABC in Aus) – Censorship
Large Companies – Gather huge amounts of information – Aim for personalisation and monotisation – Leads to centralisation
Rebuilding the Internet with Multicast – Scalable – Happens at the network layer – Needs to be enabled on all routers in each hop – Currently off by default
Libracast – Aims to get multicast in the hands of developers – Tunnels though non-multicast enabled devices – Messaging Library – Transitional tunneling – Improved routing protocol – Try to enable in other FOSS projects – Ensure new standards ( WebRTC, QUIC) support multicast
