Grady wasn’t looking convinced. “John, I understand that the people in the positions we’re talking about have problems, like everyone else, but they are in special circumstances in their positions. Plus, they are background checked for flaws and vulnerabilities.”
John shook his head. “Grady, the government does periodic checks, but we’ve got a lot of dissatisfied people in this country right now. The government scene is no different. The brass is making unreasonable requests without regard to cutbacks in departments, pay grades, or what their employees are dealing with in this austere economy. Only a few of the higher ups show any respect for their employees. Most of them like to remind the plebeians that they can be replaced at a moment’s notice. That tends to lower ethics and personal price tags. Treat people like furniture and they’ll respond with their own negative brand of rebellion. Maybe for you death would come before you’d break your word or commitment, but not everyone feels that kind of loyalty to what they consider strictly a job. Any kind of trouble at home can compromise their already weakened ethics.”
Grady lifted an eyebrow, and gave John a long, appraising look.
John shook his head, looking amused. “Sorry…I’m on my soapbox.”
Grady sighed. “Yeah, I know. I know, John. I hate this kind of investigation. It makes me feel like everyone is suspect. It’s too easy to judge someone guilty before all the facts are in.” Grady stood up, feeling uncomfortable. His strong frame filled his tailored uniform as he straightened his back. “But, a little reality every now and then is good. The idea of an insider being bought has been discussed before, of course, but we didn’t see any way that the system could be compromised without discovery. How do you buy a whole department? If we suppose that it could happen, then what I need to know is the mechanics of breaking the system, and how we’d spot it. How could they do it? What could they do once they are in? Can a breach occur without detection?”
John’s shoulders relaxed. “Now that’s the tricky part...not getting caught. That depends on what you want to do once you’re in. Come with me. I want to show you something.”
John walked past Grady to the office across the hall. Grady found a room full of old and new contraptions; electronic boxes, old fashioned colored light panels, strange keyboards, and a mix of electrical smells and machine oil. “Welcome to my laboratory.” John’s wide gesture encompassed the comparatively small room. “Here’s what I want you to see. This is an interesting gismo. Recognize it?” John pointed to a typewriter looking device in a wood box.
“Enigma?” Grady asked.
“Right! Very good. It’s a working facsimile of an actual Enigma device from Nazi Germany used in World War II.”
“I saw a mock up Hollywood version in a submarine movie somewhere along the line.” Grady loved war movies.
“Correct. Most of the Enigma ciphers were captured by the British off submarines.” John loved old gadgets.
“And a purple box?” Grady looked a bit skeptical.
John picked up a small purple painted box. “This is an electronic clone of the Japanese Purple cipher, or AN-1, also from WW II. The real ones weren’t purple, of course; that was the code name our black chamber guys gave it.”
“Did they call it that in Bletchley Park, too?”
“Very good. Yes, the Brits as well. You have been watching the movies, haven't you?” John motioned toward the equipment again. “Everything in this room is an obsolete coding-decoding device. They work as well or better than the new stuff designed to replace them. In fact, we’d still be using them if their codes hadn’t been broken. Or I should say, the Germans or Japanese, or whichever country developed them, would be using these devices. OPOV is basically the same thing. It captures the message—in this case a ‘vote' or tally of votes—transmits it in code, then decodes it on the other end. The part voters see are the electronic keys and screens, which replace paper ballots. The tough part is behind the scenes. You want to wreck the system? You have to break the code.”
“So you have to think the way the people who broke these machines thought.” Grady offered.
“That’s absolutely correct. In reality, most of these weren’t broken at all. Someone captured the device and the decoding book, or the transmitter made a mistake, like adding, ‘Heil Hitler’ to the end of too many messages. So, with OPOV, who can get their hands on the device? Or, In this case, who has access to the software code? Or will they make a mistake that we can catch? I would guess the enemy doesn’t want to just listen in on the transmitted code; he or she wants to change the outcome. They could forge votes that add to the count, lose votes to reduce the count, or flip votes from one side to the other.”
“Flipping makes more sense to me. That way the total would still tally.” Grady offered.
“Yes, but there’s more to consider.” John’s eyes focused somewhere behind Grady. “I’d like to bring Pat and Gail in on this.”
Grady nodded his approval. “As long as they realize that this is a discreet, and very unofficial investigation.”
“Hey,” laughed John, “we don’t have any other kind.”
In moments, John had returned with Gail. She was in her late forties, attractive, and a little on the heavy side. Her dark, warm eyes were friendly. Pat came in close behind her, his sixty plus years showing in his walk, but not in his toothy grin. They were civilians, as was commonplace in the Pentagon.
“Gail, Pat, this is Lieutenant Colonel Barlow, from M.I.” John introduced.
“Pleased to meet you,” they said, almost simultaneously. Grady noticed that Gail spoke with a faint South American accent. They all shook hands.
“I think we should start with a baseline.” John said. “Colonel, care to do the honors?” John offered a marker to Grady, and gestured toward the white board on the wall.
“No, no. You’re doing fine.” Grady declined. He figured he’d do better to let these three brainstorm while he listened.
“Okay...” John took a breath. “We’re reviewing the idea of breaking the OPOV system, how it might be done, and where it could be spotted.”
Grady listened as John reviewed what they had already discussed. Soon the three abandoned the board, and were talking in a circle. The information seemed to be a rehash of the obvious to Grady, but Gail and Pat looked decidedly intrigued.
“History is replete with examples of corruption in the voting process so let’s not concentrate on that.” John interrupted at one point. “Keep in mind that the existing voting method has a multitude of holes and problems. Remember Florida in the early two thousands? The system became a joke, and nothing until OPOV had any hope of restoring the public faith in voting. One Person, One Vote. The electronic system would never have been such a popular idea if the current system wasn’t so flawed. My opinion.”
Pat nudged Gail with a grin as she said laughingly. “Hey, just cause your guy lost, John, doesn’t mean the system is a total waste.”
“School’s out on whether that was a win for us, or not.” Pat shot back at Gail.
“Okay, let’s get back on subject.” John admonished them both.
“Yeah, sorry; back on track.” Gail thought for a moment. “Okay...so, in steps Senator Tom Baxter with his revolutionary platform based on getting us back to One Person, One Vote. OPOV becomes a critical factor in his election. He wins. The system is built, and it’s about to go online, which brings us to this point.”
“Don’t forget that if it works, the new administration has promised to extend many of the voting duties of The House and Senate to the people, and to do away with the Electoral College completely. States may follow with some delegate systems,” Pat added.
“That’s an urban myth; although many would like it to be true.” Gail argued
“Myth?” Pat shook his head. “Bull! Baxter said it.”
“Myth or not,” John chimed in, “motive to break the system is easy to come by. Plenty of people and special interests have reason to not like the concept. Let�
��s stay focused on the process flow. Not the motive.”
Gail scooted back in her chair. “As I understand the OPOV process, individuals use either their own computer, or public voting connection. They input their voting pin id, and place their vote. I see a bunch of software, hardware, and transmission weak points with that plan. Then the vote gets summed at a central county server; another software and hardware weak point, and all the county servers go to the state server and get summed up again. Once again, we have software, hardware, and transmission weak points—especially if the systems aren’t all on fiber. Then the national server sums all the states. That’s all the same problem again. Up until the transmission from the state to national, the whole thing is done through SSL ‘secure’ Internet, which is public domain, and anything but secure, so that’s a huge conglomeration of weaknesses.”
Pat leaned forward. “There are too many possible ways to connect with the Internet. Nobody can control all the possible lines between the individual voter and the county servers. Too many companies now control the certificates and SSL systems to call it secure from our viewpoint. Hell, it’s hard just keeping the routing within the US. Truth is, there are so many weak points that the sheer volume of connections would overwhelm a perpetrator. The value of that much work would be doubtful except with a robot virus, and a virus would be too visible; too obvious. Low return on investment, if you ask me. The scope is far too large. What you want is a method that stays hidden, and is therefore reusable. This is, after all a multi-use proposition, right?”
Grady wasn’t paying attention as well as he thought, suddenly realizing the question was directed at him. He jerked forward a bit in his chair. “Yes, I suppose that’s true….yes…multi-use. Why would you want to change just one election, when you could manipulate them all?”
John agreed. “I’d agree with that. Why would a manipulation method be created for only one pass? The first time you tried it, the system would probably be testing, or the subject would be a vote of relative unimportance. Some future vote would be the target. So, you’d want to be able to control the vote anytime. You’d want control over the issues you care about.”
John was quiet for a moment before continuing, “It’s the subtotals that are important. It’s all a game of percentages. Where you get the most return for your effort is the issue.” Pat noted Gail’s nod of agreement. “The connection of state to national can be on controlled lines. Fifty or so are manageable; in fact we have plenty of those now. The packet of information transmitted would be relatively small, since we would only be dealing in subtotals.”
“Right.” Pat interjected. “That makes software at the servers a likely target.” John stood up to the whiteboard again. “So,” Pat continued, “who wrote the software?”
“The NSA.” Gail said. “They wrote the summing and Intranet software code, too.”
“They’re in charge of all the Crypto?” Gail asked.
“All of it.” John stated. “They won’t let anyone near it.” John pointed to Pat with his marker. “So, it’s safe to say the NSA is our number one technical weak point.”
“Yes,” Pat answered, “and no one agency gets to monitor everything they do. We all get a piece of it.”
“They used quantum cryptography with coherent states, right?” John asked.
“Right.” Gail nodded.
Grady positioned his hands in the shape of a capital T. “Whoa...time out. You’ve lost me with that one.”
Gail turned in her chair to face him. “Have you read the white paper on ‘Security of coherent state quantum cryptography against collective attacks in the presence of Gaussian channel noise,’ by Heid and Lutkenhaus?” she asked.
“Sorry, I must have missed that one.” Grady wondered if they caught the light sarcasm in his tone. They all looked dead serious about Gail’s question to him.
“Quantum Cryptography,” Gail continued, “is all about stopping eavesdroppers. Simply put, honest users are limited by available technology. Bad guys aren’t. We have to do a worst-case analysis here, so we must assume that only the laws of quantum mechanics limit the bad guys. This is somewhat restrictive, since we still can’t generate controlled streams of single photons. They, like us, have to rely on weak pulses with strong vacuum components to enhance the safety of the transmission. You follow?”
“Only very generally,” Grady had to admit.
“Let me try.” John chimed in. “A quantum system assumes an eavesdropping attempt creates channel errors. Not errors in data; errors in phase, amplitude, and so forth. The amount of information leaked depends on both the system and the eavesdropping strategy. The ability to interject information is even more difficult, so small changes in the header or scrambler code introduce so much error that no matter how advanced the bad guy’s equipment is, the laws of quantum mechanics, or physics, are against them all the way. The bottom line is, once it’s on the controlled transmission lines, particularly fiber, they don’t have a prayer.” The room went quiet. “So that’s it!” John smiled.
“What’s ‘it’?” Grady asked, perplexed.
“The answer.” Pat responded. “It’s in the software.”
“Right.” Gail had a big smile on her face. “The summing software is the most vulnerable spot, with the biggest gain for effort made. That’s the most likely spot for the breaker to make an attempt.”
“There you go, Colonel.” John placed his marker in the tray.
“Thanks.” Grady answered, wondering how this had gotten him any further in his search. “Now what?”
“Well, that’s it. We’ve pinpointed the most likely opportunity. Now all you need is a smoking gun. This,” John pointed to the NSA letters on the board, “is the most likely place for the crime to occur.”
“That’s a lot of territory.” Grady insisted. “What I was hoping to hear is how they could do it, so we can head off any attempt.”
“That’s the fun part, isn’t it?” John told him. “Everybody will be watching the obvious hacker routines, and espionage plays. There could be a flaw in the crypto, but as you’ve heard that is highly unlikely. We can help there, of course. Gail and Pat would love an excuse to hack at NSA.”
“We’d be glad to.” Pat stood. “Crypto is our business; particularly this kind. Besides, any complex system has inherent flaws. National security is one of our charters, so it’s in our purview. The easiest way to spot possible hacking is to actually hack the system. That’s also how we’ll find out how to spot the hacking. I get a kick out of doing it to the NSA.”
John butted in, giving a look to Pat. “Not that we’ve ever done that, officially.” John walked over to shake Grady’s hand. “Give us a month on the cryptography. We should have something by then, but software and a software operator...that’s the sweet spot on this deal.”
“A month? I need something sooner, John. How about a week?” Grady asked, disappointed in the time frame. Neither he nor Robert had considered the time involved in a project like this. Plus the software deduction wasn’t an answer; it was just another question.
“You don’t want much, do you? I guess we can get something for you in the next week.” John relented. “But we’ll have less to tell. I doubt we will be able to nail your target operation source.”
“Rome didn’t burn in a day.” Gail chimed in.
“They didn’t have the right flammable mix. I suspect your group here carries a little more fire power.” Grady shook each of their hands. “I really appreciate all your help. Of course I’d appreciate your discretion on this...”
“Keep it quiet?” John offered.
“Yes. Here’s my card with a secure number.”
“We never call,” said John, “it’s best for you, and for us. You can call me on this number.” John showed him a small plastic key chain. “It will work for thirty days from when I sync it.”
Grady watched as John held the thin plastic case against a grey plastic box on the desk. The small LCD display on it flashed all z
eros then all eights.
John handed it to Grady. “The display will flash a ten-digit number for sixty seconds, followed by a six-digit number that will stay on for thirty seconds. You call the first number like any telephone. When you hear the beep, punch in the second number. It’s similar to a VPN ID number system, but more advanced telephony. It is always scrambled between where I am and the closest military switch to wherever you are. Just a toy I cooked up.”
“Military grade VPN?” Grady had not seen one of these.
“Well, it’s my Virtual Private Network. Maybe this enhancement will make me rich when businesses want the same protection,” John joked.
“It should, John, but not with Uncle Sam watching.” Grady put the key chain in his pocket.
Grady reflected that he’d just involved himself more deeply in this project than he’d intended, and more seriously. He no longer wondered if this was a paranoid waste of time. Now he was worried they wouldn’t find the weak point in time to protect the system, and he wondered who might be behind a plot to corrupt the voting. He also felt now that there was something Robert hadn’t told him.
Grady headed for his office to call Robert.
Chapter 16
The Round Robin was steeped in tradition, and famous for having introduced properly made Mint Juleps to Washington. D.C. Insiders knew that it also maintained one of the finest selections of single malt scotches in the city. Robert’s appointment with the Senator would be expensive, but meeting in one of Gregg’s preferred hangouts might give him the edge he wanted.
Robert sat in the noisy bar watching tourists flow in to order the famous drink. At fifteen dollars each, the juleps were generally a single-drink experience. There were more economical offerings in other bars, which caused the sightseeing populace to move on in relatively short order. The locals filtering into the Willard were easy to spot. They largely shunned the Julep for Scotch, or for a glass of wine.
One Man Two Votes (The Robert Carlton Series Book 1) Page 11