Month: May 2021

I’ve already discussed the insanity of tying all those Maricopa County systems together, and how — if the sheriff is correct about what would be exposed simply by looking at routers — the election system is already compromised. But look a little closer at Penzone’s statement:

We are talking about confidential, sensitive and highly-classified law enforcement data and equipment that will be permanently compromised.

Not “Looking at the routers would reveal database server addresses.” He is saying that looking at the routers would reveal the actual data. Think about that. I see three options.

1. He is lying.

2. He believed someone else’s lie.

3. The data is on the routers.

#3 is scary. Routers log connections, packet counts, connection attempts, firewall data. But they don’t normally log packet content, the actual data. So the data the sheriff says would be exposed shouldn’t be there.

But… If they’ve configured the routers for packet sniffing and logging, then yes; it would. But remember, this is a county wide network.

Bill payments, payroll data including names and bank routing and account numbers, HIPAA-protected Medicare/Medicaid patient data, emails, chat messages…

…anything sent over the county wide network.

I imagine blackhats around the world are probing the hell out of maricopa.gov by now, hoping to get in and steal — or hold for ransom — all the great data the sheriff claims is there, sitting on routers, all nicely collected for them. Instead of getting into the network, then probing a bunch of separate servers, they just need to attack a router.

Of course, they’ll mostly just be disappointed if the sheriff was lying or misled. But they’ll want to check.

All because Sheriff Penzone told them the data is there.

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Maricopa Sheriff Penzone issued a statement regarding the election system routers the county is refusing to turn over to auditors.

Key point:

“The integrity of classified data, private information and law enforcement specific material would immediately be vulnerable and exposed, regardless of the steps promised by a private vendor who states otherwise.”

The integrity of all that was already compromised when the county stupidly and insanely used the general county network for the election system.

I have a bit of experience with computer networks that need to be secured against general access. Rule 1: Don’t tie systems together unnecessarily (like Worldcom did in the ’90s*).

Interestingly, Penzone claims turning over the routers could reveal “individual passwords.” What would those passwords be?

Obviously, they could include router administrator passwords; but how many people needed admin access to routers? If everyone in the MCSO had that, then — again — his network is already compromised.

Perhaps these are WiFi routers using WPA2 security, and the passwords are for individual users. But the election system isn’t supposed to have general WiFi access. Compromised.

Sheriff, your whole county was compromised when some idiot — who probably thought he was saving money — used the existing county network for the election system instead of springing for a secure and isolated election network. Blame him, not the Senate and the auditors.

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* Worldcom decided to put all their DCS, muxes, SONET, etc., across the country, on one big WAN. In itself, not a prob. The NOC needed access to the systems. But they did two things very, very wrong:

1. They kept all the default admin passwords from the factory. Poor security. No security.

2. They left in place old legacy dialup modems that were tied into the local networks of individual POPs. And those dialups were not password protected.

Anyone, anywhere in the world could dial in to those modems and run rampant through nationwide network of the largest long distance provider in the country (at the time). A prankster could do anything he wished using default passwords, and much of the older systems that were hooked in used no passwwords. A malicious person could have killed the Internet (Worldcom did it at least once), and shut down US long distance phone service (mostly through cascading SS7 failures; I saw that happen, too, with another company. Way to go, Sparky.).

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I’ve gone over the alleged — but not published — Notice of Proposed Rule-Making. While this version clearly shows lineage with the earlier leaked draft, some of the more psychotic elements are gone, but replaced with vague, arbitrary arrogations of Congressional authority. It’s almost as if they read my remarks on their draft.

The ATF gives the docket number for this as “ATF 2021R-05.” When this finally appears on Regulations.gov, I intend to file the following comment.

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COMMENT

The ATF takes note of the fact that existing law, as written and passed by Congress, does not define “firearm” to include many types of implements including AR-pattern arms with separate upper and lower “receivers,” (split-frame) semiautomatic handguns with separate slides and “frames,” or striker-fired implements. The Notice of Proposed Rule-Making pretends that these are recent innovations that Congress could not have envisioned, and thus the ATF must broaden the language of the law to catch up. I have multiple objections to this. Continue reading Commenting on the ATF’s NPRM Redefining “Firearm”

“Dick Cheney…..take your daughter hunting.“

For those with short memories, he’s referencing this.

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The Department of Justice “issued a notice of proposed rulemaking” on Friday afternoon — but of course, when few will notice. This is the one TZP recently warned was coming.

Except.. not really. It has not been published in the Federal Register/Regulations.gov as of 5/7/2021, 5:00PM ET. A search on neither “firearm” nor “Docket No. ATF 2021R-05” returns any docket. Therefore, despite the DOJ’s claim, commenting online is not possible yet.

You may download a copy of what the ATF purports to be the NPRM from their website. I have done so, and will analyze it to see where and how it differs from the leaked draft I previously picked apart. But this is my normal quitting time for the day, so I’m not sure quickly I’ll make headway

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The cat’s, I mean.

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And they’re refusing to give it to the auditors.

In his interview with OAN Ken Bennett said Dominion is refusing to comply with the State Senate’s subpoena and is hiding the second password for their machines.

Anyone familiar with AZ law on refusing to comply with a Senate subpoena? Seems like a crime to me. Let me do a little searching…

Added: There it is.

41-1154. Disobedience of legislative subpoena or refusal to give testimony or produce papers; violation; classification

A person who, being subpoenaed to attend as a witness before either house of the legislature or any committee thereof, knowingly fails or refuses without lawful excuse to attend pursuant to such subpoena, or being present knowingly refuses to be sworn or to answer any material or proper question, or to produce, upon ON reasonable notice, any material and relevant books, papers or documents in his THE PERSON’S possession or under his THE PERSON’S control, is guilty of a class 2 misdemeanor AND IN ADDITION TO ANY OTHER FINE AUTHORIZED BY LAW, THE COURT MAY IMPOSE A FINE OF $1,000 PER DAY.

13-707. Misdemeanors; sentencing

A. A sentence of imprisonment for a misdemeanor shall be for a definite term to be served other than a place within custody of the state department of corrections. The court shall fix the term of imprisonment within the following maximum limitations:

1. For a class 1 misdemeanor, six months.

2. For a class 2 misdemeanor, four months.

3. For a class 3 misdemeanor, thirty days.

The lawyers should have expensive fun arguing this one.

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I was going to ignore this one because it’s just too easy. But it does explain a lot.

I figure that means she was a failed abortion attempt which resulted in fetal brain damage.

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