With the evolution of elections we are seeing a move by many municipalities and other bodies to start incorporating digital and technological mechanisms to our elections. In December of 2019 the City of Calgary began its evaluation for a new Election Management System (EMS), one of the company’s evaluated was Konnech Inc.
Background
Konnech Inc is an election management company that was founded in 2002 by Eugene Yu. Yu graduated from Zhejiang University in 1982 before he moved to the US where he received his MBA from Wake Forest University in 1988. One month after Yu founded the company Konnech, he registered the domain ‘www.konnech.com’. The company has a portfolio of various other software it has developed, one of the applications within Konnech’s portfolio is Pollchief, the company’s flagship EMS.
Konnech lists at least 32 clients throughout North America with at least two of them in Canada being the Cities of Calgary & Edmonton, Konnech also has contracts with Queensland, Australia and various American Municipalities, counties and states.
On October 4, 2022 Eugene Yu, the CEO of Konnech Inc. was arrested for the possible theft of personal identifying information of election workers and storing them on Chinese servers.
A month later on November 8, 2022 the LA district attorney dismissed all charges ‘without prejudice against Konnech founder and CEO Eugene Yu. Tiffiny Blacknell, director, Bureau of Communications for the Los Angeles County District Attorney’s office is quoted “We are concerned about both the pace of the investigation and the potential bias in the presentation and investigation of the evidence. As a result, we have decided to ask the court to dismiss the current case and alert the public in order to ensure transparency in this process.”
The phrase ‘without prejudice’ means the case can be opened again.
Blacknell continued, “We have assembled a new team with significant cyber security experience to determine whether any criminal activity occurred. We have also engaged an independent expert to continue to review the evidence.”
"Our office has an ongoing obligation to continually reassess the case in light of all of the available evidence. We currently have an immense volume of digital data that will define this case, but the processing of that data will take months. We would not be able to fairly and accurately process and present all of that evidence within the statutory timeframes.”
The City of Calgary Contract
On January 4, I received my FOIP request of the invoices and contracts between the City of Calgary and the company Konnech Inc. Before receiving this request it was only speculation that the City had a contract with Konnech, this was based on IP addresses associated with various websites used by the City of Calgary.
Included in the FOIP is a proposal from the City that list mandates and requests the city uses to score applicants on their ability to meet the requests. Included in the extensive list, among other items is the management of election workers.
The Pollchief application that is provided by Konnech manages poll workers, polling locations, census data, campaigns, assets, mail-in ballots, special ballots, advance ballots and supplies needed to run an election.
On June 10, 2020, the City of Calgary awarded the contract to supply the Election Management Software to the Michigan based company Konnech Inc. The first half of the payment was made to Konnech Inc. on July 8, 2020 for $412,282.51 with the second half of payment made on December 15, 2020 for $453,682.50. two consecutive milestone payments were also made to Konnech for $128,551.50 and $141,771.00, this is also followed with regular annual licence renewals for $63,840 for each consecutive year, this was also in US funds.
The Controversy
A report put out in June 2020 by the legal affairs and Community safety committee of Queensland Australia outlines various critical issues involving the testing and implementation of the EMS Pollchief for their upcoming election, these issues include:
- The scope of the product changes necessary to satisfy Queensland’s election management requirements was ‘massively underestimated’ during the procurement process;
- There had been an inadequate assessment done during the procurement process of the maturity of the supplier (Konnech) to deliver such extensive code development.
It is also noted: In January/February 2020, delivery of the project was further impacted in the final development and bug fixing stages with the COVID-19 lockdown of Wuhan, China, where most of the coding resources are based, this at the same time when the City of Calgary was evaluating the possible contract with Konnech Inc.
In a similar fashion as Queensland, within the City of Calgary contract it was stated that due to the extraordinary event of Covid-19 a hosting plan is required due to imposed restrictions. The supplier’s programming environment was hosted in the US but was not to handle or process any data that is the property of the City. Accordingly the data used in the PoC (Proof of Concept) may be hosted in the supplier’s Lansing-Metro Data Center located in Lansing Michigan.
The Pit
In August of 2022 Catherine Englebrecht of True the Vote and Gregg Phillips of OPSEC organized an event in Arizona with the purpose of bringing together journalists, social media influencers, researchers and other interested parties to disclose new information regarding election irregularities they had found.
While examining these irregularities the team from Gregg Phillips had come across an IP address for a server that was purportedly associated with a company named Konnech, that IP address, as it turns out, was based out of China. In some instances it was used by a software application from Konnech before switching to a new IP address from Grand Rapids Michigan.
While probing the IP address, Greggs team found that one of the ports of the IP address is one that’s typically used by a NoSQL a program called MongoDB. The team then tried a common practiced task that is used by cyber security teams called ‘testing the locks’, by trying the ‘out of the box’ default password to gain access through the port of the IP address and it worked.
What they found was data that included 1.8 million US poll workers that included the details of names, phone numbers, addresses and more. They also reportedly found information on where electronic election machines were located, floor plans of the buildings where the elections were held. Information that’s normally used by election agencies to track their elections supplies and inventory.
Note: China introduced a Data Security Law (DSL) in 2021 that any data found on its internet is to be regulated by the government so in effect, China has discretion of anything found on this Chinese server.
Following the release of information from ‘The Pit’, many independent journalists began their own research that uncovered an even larger web of controversy revolving around Konnech Inc. and its founder Eugene Yu. Researchers such as Kanekoa, Cognative Carbon and others uncovered connections between the CCP and Eugene Yu. Other research has lead to the IP addresses that were registered to Eugene Yu, the IP 75.75.210.242 that also shows up on Chinese servers is associated with the Chinese online distributor Alibaba. A massive list of websites was collected that included many jurisdictions, the following is just a small sample of the list discovered.
- vote4detriot.com
- vote4minneapolis.com
- vote4boston.com
- vote4fairfax.com
- indy.pollchief.com
- test.vote4edmonton.ca
- test.vote4calgary.com
- test.worktheedmontoncensus.ca
- eptest.vote4calgary.com
- beta.pollchief.com
- 2dmeeting.cn
- hongzhengtech.cn
- edmontonspecialballot.com
Cybersecurity Investigations
With the arrest of Eugene Yu, the LA county law enforcement executed a search warrant for the seizure of cell phones, laptops, computer servers and external storage devices from the headquarters of Konnech Inc. to assist the DA’s Bureau of Investigation, cybersecurity firm Cain & Associates was hired to perform a forensic analysis. Cain & Associates stated in their statement on the security of Konnech’s data, “During the investigation Cain and Associates found evidence of a potential foreign adversary intelligence operation inside Konnech infrastructure connected to Chinese IP addresses. Konnech employees and contractors appear to be violating numerous laws and regulations regarding US critical infrastructure.”
Evidence from Cain & Associates;
- Confirmed multiple instances of Konnech hosting, on servers based in China, U.S. citizens personally identifiable information (PII)
- Found evidence in private company messages that software code was being developed, tested, and maintained in China
- Confirmed that Konnech was providing administrative credentials to Chinese developers
- Has evidence that Konnech employees have shared election-related data through, from, and on Chinese servers and applications
- Has evidence in metadata pulled from relevant files indicating Eugene Yu was involved in developing Chinese government (i.e., Wucheng District People’s Congress) election software
- Has evidence showing Konnech is associated with several companies based in mainland China that appear to be associated with if not subsidized by the Chinese government
Thanks to the extensive research from Kanekoa connections were discovered between Konnech Inc. and the electronic voting systems for China’s National People’s Congress. In July, 2015 Konnech registered the website honghengtech.cn using the email admin@konnech.com. Sometime between 2015 and 2022 the email registered to hongzhengtech.cn was changed from admin@konnech.com to jiadeng@hongzhengtech.cn. Hongzhengtech.cn is the website for Jinhua Hongzheng Technology Co. Ltd a company that builds electronic voting systems for China’s National People’s Congress.
A New Whistleblower
On December 22, 2022 former employee of Konnech Inc. Grant Bradley filed a sworn civil complaint that corroborates True the Votes claim that Konnech Inc. transferred poll workers information data to China. This raises more questions regarding the investigation done by the FBI and the LA’s district attorney’s office to drop the case against Eugene Yu.
According to Bradley, Konnech provides “election logistic software” to 32 clients in North America, using “developers, designers and coders” who “are all Chinese nationals based out of Wuhan, China,” a claim that is supported by the investigation done in Queensland Australia. Bradley claimed that he “worked with the Chinese programmers on a daily basis,” and that he “witnessed customer’s data (specifically poll watcher information) being made accessible to foreign nationals from China.”
More Court Dates for Yu
On Febuary 25, 2023 True the Vote, Catherine Englebrecht and Gregg Phillips filled an emergency motion to inspect Konnech’s electronic devices, the same devices that LA county seized in Eugene Yu’s original arrest. Also as current as of March 2, 2023 Eugene Yu had hearing in LA court, the court has rescheduled till March 14, 2023 where the court will decide on proceeding with the forensic evaluation of all the electronic devices.
Contacting Elections Calgary
After multiple attempts to contact Elections Calgary for comment and to confirm if the City of Calgary is still in a contract with Konnech Inc. Elections Calgary responded. “The contract with Konnech was terminated on March 1, 2023. The contract included provisions to terminate the agreement without cause with 30 days notice, which was exercised by the city due to a change in direction based on our business needs".
"The city has not signed an agreement with another EMS provider, but is currently exploring options.”