Trump's pathway to the presidency now in the hands of Russian hackers

[Professor Emeritus]

Fivethirtyeight has been projecting Trump's election chances at around 15-20% for a solid month now, and the poll averages haven't had Trump within 5% of Clinton since the DNC. But there is still one pathway to victory for Trump even if the voters never get on board themselves.

Russian hackers have apparently made breaches into the Arizona and Illinois voting records

Hackers targeted voter registration systems in Illinois and Arizona, and the FBI alerted Arizona officials in June that Russians were behind the assault on the election system in that state.

The bureau described the threat as “credible” and significant, “an eight on a scale of one to 10,” Matt Roberts, a spokesman for Arizona Secretary of State Michele Reagan (R), said Monday. As a result, Reagan shut down the state’s voter registration system for nearly a week.

Until now, countries such as Russia and China have shown little interest in voting systems in the United States. But experts said that if a foreign government gained the ability to tamper with voter data — for instance by deleting registration records — such a hack could cast doubt on the legitimacy of U.S. elections.

“I’m less concerned about the attackers getting access to and downloading the information. I’m more concerned about the information being altered, modified or deleted. That’s where the real potential is for any sort of meddling in the election,” said Brian Kalkin, vice president of operations for the Center for Internet Security, which operates the MS-ISAC, a multistate information-sharing center that helps government agencies combat cyberthreats and works closely with federal law enforcement.

The main threat being described is the deletion of voting records, so that likely Clinton voters will find themselves to no longer be registered when the reach the voting booth. However, with the advent of online voting there is some possibility that the Russians could tamper with actual results.

This spring, a DHS official cautioned that online voting is not yet secure.

“We believe that online voting, especially online voting in large scale, introduces great risk into the election system by threatening voters’ expectations of confidentiality, accountability and security of their votes and provides an avenue for malicious actors to manipulate the voting results,” said Neil Jenkins, an official in the department’s Office of Cybersecurity and Communications.

Private-sector researchers are also concerned about potential meddling by Russians in the U.S. election system. Rich Barger, chief information officer at ThreatConnect, said that several of the IP addresses listed in the FBI alert trace back to a website-hosting service called King Servers that offers Russia-based technical support. Barger also said that one of the methods used was similar to a tactic employed in other intrusions suspected of being carried out by the Russian government, including one this month on the World Anti-Doping Agency.

Imagine the fukkery if polls show Clinton ahead 2-3 points in the big swing states on the eve of the election, exit polls show the same, but online voting results "surprisingly" come in as a Trump landslide and give him the election.

 

[无名的]

Tech is only going to get scarier. shyt like this makes it so much easier to undermine democracy, even in one of the world's strongest democracies.



Vlad gotta fall back on this one. This is dangerous territory.

Not many scenarios I envision where I'd want a Hillary win, but legitimate vote count is definitely one of them.