System or do a distributed Service Attack against somebodys system and knock it offline. Think about that. If somebody went after one of the states and distributed the service against one of those databases online. It knocks it off in the middle of the election. The next thing well talk about is poison updates at the manufacturer level. I think we already covered that. Okay. Spreading malware to state election systems. Sure. A lot of these methods are interchangeable. You can use them for local pc. But it comes down to, for me, if i were the adversary coming in, i would poison the update. I would start at the manufacturer level, also gain access to the state server, i would get access to the database, infiltrate, and the right packet size, and have some type of malicious payload that could bridge that air gap and have full functionality. I would also add a ransomware feature. Its something nobody is really talking about whether its the Voter Registration data or the final tabulation, total tally of the vote for that night. It would be interesting to ransomware that. Again, all it is is a weaponization of encryption injected through normal channels. With all these different malware discussions, theres a lot of overlap. So the responses will largely be simple. At that level, you probably see a lot of the same sort of behavior, identify the target, do your reconon them, infect them via spear phish or if you have physical access, then its that much more easy in terms of just plugging into a usb drive or dropping your payload in any other way thats available to you. But, you know, outside of that, its going to be mostly the same. And utilizing the same sort of tools. Yeah, i think most of these systems are so easily compromised that, number one, they should have never been released, so there should have been some standard that theyre held to and its not security to obscurity, as we like to say, because quite frankly its been proven time and time again not to work. Its better to have a set of standards that theyre actually measured against with people actually doing the measuring that have a large component of cybersecurity expertise to ensure those systems cant be compromised. Today we could stand up here and talk about the methods to compromise them probably for hours because there are so many different vulnerabilities in these systems. The issues are no longer obscure. Everything is documented and already out there. You can get technical maintenance manuals for these things. Things that should be internal are all available on these machines that have been around since the early 2000s, mid 2000s. They are all still in use today. There are not a lot of brandnew machines undocumented or where it hasnt been leaked out there. Go to black box voting or any number of sites that tend to collect this information and pull down whatever you want in terms of Field Service guides or firmware update manuals or codes to actually do firmware updates on all these things. You know, things that you would assume would be internal and hold closely guarded secrets, but theyre not. Theres no obscurity on these things. I think you emphasized my point further better than i did. Now that all the manuals are out there, some have been for quite sometime, there is no sobscurit, so security a lot of the modern systems are running derivatives of windows or a special build of windows. They would have behaved like any other host in terms of how you would infect them or what types of things you could infect them with. A lot of states or officials will argue that because some of these systems are air gapped, you cant compromise them in that way. Oftentimes you have to move data from those systems to connected systems in order to get the full results external. So that may be, you know, i have to move this usb drive or, you know, in some cases a zip drive, or in some cases a pc card over to this connected system to get the results out. And that could be a point of compromise. Same thing, if you have to which is the case with at least ten of the manufacturers, if you have to move the data to a connected machine in order to ftp the results outward, you as the user of these tabulators and as these systems are going to end up breaking the air gap at one point or another during the process. Perfect. So now well close off the conversation by talking a bit about the current climate were living in, especially given the time frame around this upcoming election. Media coverage has talked about the dnc hack, rnc hack, certain individuals talking about the possible integrity of the results. Whats your take on the theories regarding who is behind some of these incidents . I think its you know, its very clear that most of us in the Community Today feel its the russians, you know, that have been behind some of these compromises. So when you look at reports from my company, from crowdstrike and many others, its clearly been linked back to the russians manipulating these systems. Its important to with a lot of these incidents, were not always talking about breaches or compromises of the voting systems or the voting machines. It may be officials tied to the processes. In terms of leaked data, what the outcome is, is a sway of opinion as a result of that leaked data. Its not necessarily compromise of machines. But theres no reason to assume that that wouldnt be part of the incident. You know, and a lot of these things are still going on. When we comment on these things, they should be treated as ongoing incidents or open investigations. So time will still continue to reveal a lot about whats going on with some of these leaks and some of these incidents. But it would also be safe to assume that they havent just left the building, so to speak. That would urge people to understand that, you know, once these actors are in, they tend to hang around for a while and, you know, continue to pull what they want to pull. Theres some fascinating reports on ap 28, ap 29, cozy bear, fancy bear, whatever you want to call them, some good reads on some of the capabilities. I think we have to be careful with attribution with this sort of thing. When we say its the russians, where . What russians . The apt nation state, apt mercenary, cyber criminal gangs, cyber criminal gang looking to pick up a state sponsor so theyre looking to pick up Something Big . Could it be china . Theyre 13year, 15year strategy, to dwindle our democratic process. That certainly coincides with the psychological warfare aspect of had a they do. Also taking into consideration the access as a service, hacker for hire, that levels the Playing Field for cyber caliphate, self radicalized insider threats, cyber jihad, that sort of thing. Cyber self radicalized, cyber lone wolves now i think is the classification. So yeah, it yeah. I think the media does tend to paint an oversimplified picture of some of these groups and some of these incidents. When you talk about, you know, a specific group, russia, they paint the image or they tried to infer the image in your mind of a room full of specific individuals that are part of this super hacker team that is known as cozy bear, fancy bear, whatever mammal it happens to be. And its not always that simple or that cut and dry. Oftentimes you see people traversing different teams because there is a huge sort of forhire aspect. You know, whoever is behind some of these things, or is controlling the resources behind some of these groups and incidents, you know, they will find, you know, people to carry out what they need to have carried out. And, you know, you know, one day they may be part of team fancy bear, but if enough money comes along for the next job, they may be team cozy bear or, you know, on and on and on. You know, you see the same type of dynamic with all these different chinese groups as well. So, you know, its important to know that, you know, the picture of just one specific group of, you know, state affiliated actors, you know, all working together as a team, you know, its not always that simple. Certainly it allows for a nation state to create some level of separation as well. Yeah, chinese pla are known for discovering vulnerabilities, odaze, during the days theyll take it down, go through english language handlers. I had Something Else on the russian aspect. Oh, yeah. When you forensically define whats occurred with a breach, a nation state actor, or a high level mercenary gang with stealth and sophistication like we see out of russia, once youve defined the forensic value of that breach, you see a lot of copycat breaches, copycat hacks. You know, and so i think thats another thing that nobodys really talking about. The copy aspect. And its not enough to just say we think its cozy bear or apt 29, is that apt 28, right . Fireeye, so they know. But once you once you have defined from a forensic perspective the toolkits, the exploits, timestamps on the code, all these factors you can easily duplicate with some technical sophistication and capability. Youll see a lot of mimicking of nation state and high level mercenary, cyber criminal gaining activity. To expand, youre hinting at it, you also see deliberate, you know, masquerading in terms of, you know, a group utilizing, you know, toolkits that may be known to be associated with another group or infrastructure thats known to be specific to another group in order to throw off analysts, throw off the security industry, you know you know, so its attributed in the wrong way. Thats a big problem with chinese stuff in particular, back in the common crew at 1 days, suddenly all these other groups were using the same tools, same infrastructure. So the attacks and incidents will get wrongly attributed to common crew when it may have been someone else. That same solving, you know, extends to other regions as well, russia included. Speaking of a lot more common, they want you to attribute it to somebody else. So yeah. A lot of methods to do that. And you look at the stealth and sophistication of the russian apt or the willingness to throw as much funding at it as possible to still support their smash and grab hacking aspect is like the pla. And you look at these sophisticated attack vectors, these sophisticated exploits, capitalizing off of odaze. These guys are used to going into ics data systems that are highly guarded. You know, you look at energetic bear, and yeah, i mean, energetic bear and key ranger, a perfect example of poisoning the update. And, you know, this is something that these are highly sophisticated people. And that they are able to do is go into highly protected areas. This isnt a state website with no layers of Cyber Security, no uba, no encryption of data in transit and stationary. The election system is completely fair game. Think about that. Fair game. And one thing. And the people that should be protecting this, the people that should be the gate keepers protecting the election process, the manufacturers with Cyber Security through the life cycle of the technology, and the secretaries of state and the state election officials, and theyre doing nothing. Theyre not technically sophisticated enough to do anything. Its time to have a changed of the changing of the guard, i think. Its interesting, your point there, it was just in the press, yesterday, the day before yesterday, i think it came from a Deputy Director at nsa. Its something all of us know, that attackers only bring out, you know, the tool set needed to require their objectives. You know, theyre not going to go out and bring out, you know, a bunch of zero days that theyve got vulnerabilities with associated code and release that if they dont need that to accomplish what they want to do. Here we are talking about this with, you know, some sophisticated attacks taking place around the world. South korea, the Korean Nuclear hydroelectric plants, north korea went after the south korean systems, took out the atms a number of years ago with media companies, with sophisticated attacks. Thats the point were trying to make today. Theres no sophistication required to hit these election systems today. None. Its very, very simple to do. So for us to say these systems cant be hacked, you know, is being very naive on our parts. So i think its something that we dont want the election to happen, so and then this gets tucked away for four more years. It needs action, funding, resourcing, and a focus. On that note, we are less than 20 days away from a major election. Is there anything that can be realistically done between now and then even if its not going to obviously address all the problems, what can we could now and what can we talk about doing for the 2018 and 2020 local and federal elections . I think first and foremost, protect the tabulator at the local and state level. Anything that comes in remotely close contact with that tabulation algorithm process, protect it. And, you know, and then forensically analyze, before elections, forensically analyze the black Box Technology that the manufacturers and the state level mutually support. Bring forensic people in to hammer the swing regions specifically of the swing state from a forensic perspective. The black box aspect, gems tabulation software, the election system as a whole. Physical security has got to be way letter. You know, realistic or not, you know, the ideal situation would be, you know, people sort of in the know, you know, or people that are familiar with the different ways to physically compromise these systems should be observing things at the polling place, that or work with the people there on what these physical compromises are. In some ways thats been done in the past, but its simply not, you know, across the board, and not done at the volume that it needs to be done. Theres so many ways to screw with these things physically. And if theres the correct pair of eyes watching for those attacks, it would stop quite a bit. I would add to further what you said, just a pinch of paranoia on everybody they hire or thats already hired as part of this process, and give them, you know, just a fiveminute spiel on it along with a sheet of paper. These are the election systems we have in our polling place, here are the ways they can be manipulated, so you should watch everybody who comes in here to make sure theyre not touching these things and watch your counterparts that are watching you. Just a pinch of paranoia to make sure people understand what shouldnt be touched. They dont have to understand even how its manipulated. Wonderful. Gentlemen, that was fascinatinf. Thank you very much. [ applause ] with that ill ask our second panel to come to the front of the room, please. Along with the president ial election we also closely watching state races. Tonight well have a debate among louisianas candidates to be senator. Youll also hear from the democratic candidate and republican david duke, live at 8 00 p. M. Eastern on cspan. An hour later, the latest New Hampshire senate de with republican incumbent kellie ayotte. Her democratic challenger is Maggie Hassan. On election day, november 8th, the nation decides our next president and which Party Controls the house and senate. Stay with cspan for coverage of the president ial race including Campaign Stops with hillary clinton, donald trump, and their surrogates. And the house and senate raises, with our coverage of their candidate debates and speeches. Cspan, where history unfolds daily. This weekend on American History tv on cspan3, saturday night at 8 00 eastern, on lectures in history, collin callaway, history professor at Dartmouth College on native American History from the colonial era through west ward expansion. Who presented themselves to us as allies and friends for the future, but clearly our enemies. The one thing we were fighting against, at the same time by cutting off withholding gifts, refusing to give gifts, limiting trade with us, thats essentially a declaration of hostile intent. And later at 10 00 on real america, we look back to the 1966 campaign for california governor between pat brown and challenger ronald reagan. My experience has turned me inevitably toward the people for the answers to problems, just instinctively i find i believe and put my faith in the private sector of the economy. And a belief in the peoples right and ability to run their own affairs. And every single solitary category of business indicia that tells whether or not californias economy is good, is proven that we have done a good job. Then sunday morning at 10 00 eastern on road to the white house rewind. Next tuesday all of you will go to the polls, youll stand there in the polling place and make a decision. I think when you make that decision, it might be well if you would ask yourself, are you better off than you were four years ago . Our proposals are very sound and very carefully considered to stimulate jobs, to improve the Industrial Complex of this country, to create tools for American Workers, and at the same time would be antiinflationary in nature. The 1980 debate between incumbent president jimmy carter and formula california governor ronald reagan. And at 7 00 a realist would not have devoted his life to fighting slavery and would not have said this, which is that a dissolution of the union for the cause of slavery would be followed by a war between the two severed portions of the union. It seems to me the result may be the calamitous result that i dare not say is to be desired. At the New York Historical society, james traub, and robert kagan, debate the question, was John Quincy Adams a realist. During the discussion they talk about the Foreign Policy views and the legacy of the sixth president. For our complete American History tv schedule, go to cspan. Org. Scottish National Party leader Nicola Sturgeon gave a closing speech in glasgow recently, warning of another independence referendum if the uk pushes for what she called a hard brexit. She also outlined several initiatives involving trade and Parental Choice over preschool childcare and called for more scottish control over immigration. Her comments are about an hour. [ applause ] [ applause ]. Delegates, we meet here in the city of glasgow five months on from the Scottish Parl