Sunday, June 25, 2017

Russian "Hacking" of Election Data Appears to Be Just the Work of Identity Thieves



The more we learn about the "hack" of election data, the more it appears it was just the work of an identity thief or thieves.

As I recently reported, it appears what the "hackers" did was simply surf public website data of voter rolls. It was always a puzzle to me why even this would be done. Now, we have more background to fill in what exactly occurred

A TIME magazine report sheds some new light:
 The hacking of state and local election databases in 2016 was more extensive than previously reported, including at least one successful attempt to alter voter information, and the theft of thousands of voter records that contain private information like partial Social Security numbers, current and former officials tell TIME.
Bloomberg adds:
 In all, the Russian hackers hit systems in a total of 39 states....
Illinois, which was among the states that gave the FBI and the Department of Homeland Security almost full access to investigate its systems, provides a window into the hackers’ successes and failures.
In early July 2016, a contractor who works two or three days a week at the state board of elections detected unauthorized data leaving the network, according to Ken Menzel, general counsel for the Illinois board of elections. The hackers had gained access to the state’s voter database, which contained information such as names, dates of birth, genders, driver’s licenses and partial Social Security numbers on 15 million people, half of whom were active voters. As many as 90,000 records were ultimately compromised.
 The one attempt to alter voter information seems odd and appears to be an outlier but the stealing of voter records that include partial Social Security numbers, DOBs and driver’s licenses info strikes me as a juicy hit for an identity thief rather than Putin. Why exactly would Putin want this info?

My identity thieves theory would also explain why they would go into the donor amount section of the databases. You steal all the identities and then see who is making the largest donations---thus likely to have the largest credit lines, etc.

 RW

3 comments:

  1. "In all, the Russian hackers hit systems in a total of 39 states....". Oh, really?? Based on what evidence? This propaganda is getting ridiculous. I remember as a kid chuckling at Red Chinese hyperbole - "running dog capitalist pigs", etc. What kind of zombie believes any of this crap out of the MSM?

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  2. If not paper ballots, there is a case for open source voting systems.

    https://www.forbes.com/sites/techonomy/2015/02/06/can-open-source-voting-tech-fix-the-u-s-elections-system/

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