How many people want to go to Moscow, Russia to buy their computer’s internet security program? Well, the third most popular security company for Macs is headquartered there. Not only that, the company has a nifty little program to manage a person’s passwords before those tricky little necessities drive their owners crazy. What could go wrong there?
The Russians have been trying to weasel their way into our state election systems for years. Just now, the Ohio Secretary of State Frank LaRose reported another Russian-owned company that tried to to hack Ohio’s state voting system on Election Day.
The state’s internal systen determined that an “SQL injection” attack tried to infect the system with “malicious code onto the office’s website,” LaRose said. The modest hack started out in Panama. However, as the investigators pulled the actual-origin thread, it led them back to a business that was Russian:
‘[We] are poking around for soft spots. The good guys won that day and the bad guys lost.’
HBO host John Oliver appeared on Last Week Tonight and said:
‘Some machines that officials insist don’t connect to the internet actually do connect to the internet, and even some machines that don’t connect directly to the internet are programmed with cards that have themselves been programmed on computers that connect to the internet.’
He continued:
‘So your voting machine isn’t connected to the internet the same way your Alexa isn’t recording everything you say and sending it directly to Jeff Bezos. It’s totally not doing that, except for when it’s totally sometimes doing that.’
Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-NY) noted that Senator Mitch McConnell’s (R-KY) announcement a “start.” The New York senator added that the bill doesn’t provide “all the money we requested” and “doesn’t include a single solitary reform that virtually everyone knows we need.”
‘If Americans don’t believe their elections are on the up-and-up. woe is us as a country and as a democracy.’
Though voting machines are not supposed to connect to the internet for security reasons, some machine analysts have discovered remote-access software on machines in key swing states and other unintended flaws that could expose their system.
Experts warned Congress that yesterday the lawmakers should have been working on this problem.
Former foremost Russian expert on the National Security Council (NSC) Fiona Hills said:
‘Right now, Russia’s security services and their proxies have geared up to repeat their interference in the 2020 election. We are running out of time to stop them.’
He explained that the state’s “Albert” alert system detected the malware attack pretty rapidly. The purpose of these Russian attacks has been to undermine the credibility of the U.S. elections. LaRose believed his system was immune to hackers, since his machines were not linked to the internet. However, there actually would be some hacking opportunities, for example in the link between the district and the collators and against between the resulting report (count)
Florida’s Governor Ron DeSantis revealed that Russian hackers had indeed breached the state’s voting system in to counties in 2016. He claimed that “nothing that affects the vote count.”
The special counsel Robert Mueller, III first made the Russian hacks evident. He testified before Congress and explained that Russia had every intention of worning itself deep within the U.S. voting computers.
The Senate Intelligence Committee found that Russia definitely targeted the “election systems in all 50 states in 2016.” They could have actually deleted or changed voter data in Illinois.
Two words: paper ballots.
The Mueller Report Adventures: In Bite-Sizes on this Facebook page. These quick, two-minute reads interpret the report in normal English for busy people. Mueller Bite-Sizes uncovers what is essentially a compelling spy mystery. Interestingly enough, Mueller Bite-Sizes can be read in any order.
