Technical Guidelines Development Committee (TGDC)
Security and Transparency Subcommittee (STS) Teleconference *
May 15, 2007, 10:30 a.m.
Minutes

Draft Agenda

1) Administrative Updates
2) Review of presentations for the TGDC meeting
3) Continuation of discussion on auditing, electronic records, and paper records requirements
4) Continuation of path forward discussion for open ended vulnerability testing (OEVT)
5) Other items
6) Future STS call schedule

Attendees: Alicia Clay, Angela Orbaugh, Commissioner Davidson (EAC), David Wagner, Helen Purcell, John Kelsey, John Wack, Mat Masterson (EAC), Nelson Hastings, Patrick Gannon, Paul Miller, Philip Pearce, Quynh Dang, Ron Rivest, Santosh Chokani, Sharon Laskowski, Wendy Havens

TGDC Plenary Meeting:

  • The new (near final) agenda for the plenary meeting will be sent out today. Presentations are due Wednesday afternoon and will be sent to subcommittee when we have them in. John reviewed the agenda for the meeting which will start with a high level overview of the structure of the VVSG. Subcommittee presentation will go CRT, HFP, then STS. The meeting may need to be extended and the schedule flexible.
  • Nelson went over STS's plan for presentation. Bill Burr will give a high level overview of security efforts, John Wack will talk about epollbooks, and Nelson will cover specifics on cryptography, setup validation, and highlight the new chapters as well as changes to the other chapters. Bill's overview will cover requirements for auditing electronic and paper records.

Discussion on Auditing, Electronic Records, and Paper Record Requirements:

John Kelsey felt that comments on the VVPR paper had been covered at the last meeting with the exception of the use of barcodes. Should they be allowed? And if so, what requirements should be written? Should the barcodes contain cast vote ballot records and should they be used for recounts or audits? Should this be a policy issue? Are they necessary considering the advancement in capabilities for OCR (OCR is voter verifiable)?

It was suggested that whether or not barcodes were used should be left up to the states. It was decided that the standard would not disallow barcodes, but there would be discussion about problems when adding more complexity to the record, and discussion that if used it must be stressed that auditing to compare information is very important. They should not be used for recounts or auditing an election.

Open Ended Vulnerability Testing (OEVT) - Santosh Chokani:

The OEVT was updated based on David Wagner's concerns. David still had concerns over the process, but with the understanding that it was meant to be descriptive and not prescriptive caused fewer issues. Ron Rivest pointed out that the paper should be used as guidance for the team conducting the test. The team should have flexibility and a clear goal. The goal of OEVT is to find vulnerabilities that could be exploited without detection to change the result of an election. Due to limitations of resources, fully exercising a vulnerability will probably not be feasible.

Today's discussion was focused on the level of effort, size of the team, and cost. The paper being discussed estimated 5 to 6 people, at 6 to 8 weeks, costing between $250K and $500K. The added "cost of this testing" causes issues for EAC as well as the state election officials. Ron stated that the costs and effort would depend on factors such as the complexity of the system, the quality of the documentation provided by vendor, number of iterations with vendor, whether it's a new system or older system, and how much expected use there will be of the system. David pointed out that extensive OEVT costs would cause barriers to entry for new innovative systems.

Several options were discussed: 1) TGDC to recommend a default (mid-range) level of testing required and EAC would determine if more or less was needed based on mitigating factors of each system. 2) TGDC would recommend a default (mid-range) level of testing and the states would request more testing if they deemed necessary based on their needs. 3) Certify/test systems based on the number of systems put in use (the more systems that you deploy requires more vulnerability testing). 4) Another model would be to have a broad range of testing requirements and let the testing labs determine what is an appropriate level of testing, within that range, based on the complexity of the system.

Santosh will take these points from discussion today, and using $100K as the bottom level testing amount, rework white paper.

Ron then brought up the reporting based on OEVT testing. A report will be generated with the list of vulnerabilities, but then a determination has to be made as to whether they are fixable flaws or not. (If they are determined to be fixable flaws, they will have to be retested.) How does this become a standard? How do you determine whether vulnerabilities are serious enough to cause a system to fail certification? David Wagner stated that a serious vulnerability is one that if a single person, using whatever he has available, can do something that will affect the outcome of an election. When a system is tested, a list of vulnerabilities found will be forwarded to EAC for determination whether the system fails or is certified. TGDC will provide to the EAC what should be considered serious vulnerabilities.

Future STS Meetings (Nelson Hastings):

The STS subcommittee will continue to meet on Tuesdays after the plenary meeting. Our next meeting is scheduled for May 29 at 10:30 a.m.

[* Pursuant to the Help America Vote Act of 2002, the TGDC is charged with directing NIST in performing voting systems research so that the TGDC can fulfill its role of recommending technical standards for voting equipment to the EAC. This teleconference served the purposes of the STS subcommittee of the TGDC to direct NIST staff and coordinate voting-related research relevant to the VVSG 2007. Discussions on this telecon are preliminary and do not necessarily reflect the views of NIST or the TGDC.]



Teleconferences from 2004, 2005, 2006 and upcoming in 2006.

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