The U.S. Senate Intelligence Committee has concluded that election systems in all 50 states were targeted by hackers linked to the Russian government, according to a heavily redacted report released today.
[…]And — as previously reported — the report says that Russia could have actually tampered with election systems if it wanted to: “Russian cyber actors were in a position to delete or change voter data,” the report reads.
On a related note, Senate majority leader Mitch McConnell blocked two bills designed to secure the voting process and prevent more Russian meddling. At this point, one has to wonder what kind of videos the Russians have of McConnell.
In any event, securing the voting process against foreign interference should be the number one concern for any democratic society – it’s why The Netherlands went back to paper voting several years ago – regardless of political affiliation. Treason is a real thing.
That is the only sensible solution: paper ballots.
Russia themselves went back to typewriters not to long ago for government sensitive information, so that should tell you something.
Thorn, what have these news to do with computer and / or operating systems? This has even remotely nothing to do with the site, just posting only political agenda, mind you. This is already the second time you are using OSnews for making a political statement without any connection to the topic of this news site.
If it just would have an additional discussion of the ballot machines themselves, like used operating systems and / or some news about TECHNICAL investigations about these sort of devices, but this would “taint” your message here, I guess.
Everyone has his or her own political beliefs, so please keep out these sort of posts from here. If you really have the itch to post something in this direction, why aren’t you doing this on Twitter?
It has to do with the attack surface on technology. As in, if I could use my home desktop to flip the entire balloting system in Russia against Vladimir Putin, or every vote in Iran against Hassan Rouhani, I would, without a second thought.
The current voting systems at use in the USA is outrageously vulnerable to such attacks. When Motorola was cheer-leading for P2P systems in 2001, saying “things are talking to things,” I pointed it that it was just a matter of time until “things are giving orders to other things.” Back then, Bluetooth and USB were kind of new, so “thing-to-thing” communication was trusted, and totally insecure. Bluetooth was the first to fail security; USB failed about a decade later.
Now, think about a family member’s pacemaker. It has firmware, it’s listening on 2 or 5 channels in the VHF/UHF channel ranges… but do you have any idea how many people around have the ways & means to access those channels? The scary point is that someone (and you’ll never know who) could replace the firmware, through an RF channel, to stop the heart 3 or 4 or 7 years later.
These attacks are not theoretical. They have been demonstrated using real equipment. A pacemaker attack is against a person. A voting system attack is against a nation.
My only quibble with Thom is to point out that, if Putin did order such an attack against our (widely varied) voting systems, it kind of back-fired against Putin. USA’s foreign policy concerning Russia might not be hostile, but under Trump it certainly hasn’t been kind, either.
But even when I disagree with Thom about his conclusions, I still support his choice of stories for the OSnews wire. No matter what one’s politics may be, one may find good take-away point from anything Thom posts here.
If you’re afraid to read OSnews, because Thom might post something that makes you angry, you should log off the entire Internet, post-haste. You’ll be doing yourself, and us, a favor.
gus3,
Do not do unto others…
It’s not just about morals or ethics. No one comes out on top when the average person has no qualms about meddling in other countries’ elections because you don’t like their candidate or you believe their system is flawed. The other side will likely view the same about yours and pre-emptive strikes will just open the floodgates..
Of course, the US decidedly does not have clean hands in this area, since it readily supports dictatorships it favours over a democratically elected government that do not bow to US demands.
“No one comes out on top when the average person has no qualms about meddling in other countries’ elections because you don’t like their candidate or you believe their system is flawed. The other side will likely view the same about yours and pre-emptive strikes will just open the floodgates..”
Those floodgates are already open, for 60+ years. No such strike is pre-emptive. As technology advances for one party, it’s shortly later that it advances for all the other parties. After that point, the technology is pretty much neutral; everyone has archers, infantry, pilots, lasers.
I’m not proud, or ashamed, to say this. I’m just stating what I’ve observed since my college days. I’m not sad that the USA supported Batista in Cuba, or that Franco won Spain’s civil war.
But a couple days ago, Girl Genius had this magnificent panel: http://www.girlgeniusonline.com/comic.php?date=20190724
We’re all human. At the end of the day, we just want a nice enough meal for supper.
“My only quibble with Thom is to point out that, if Putin did order such an attack against our (widely varied) voting systems, it kind of back-fired against Putin. USA’s foreign policy concerning Russia might not be hostile, but under Trump it certainly hasn’t been kind, either.”
I think a lot of people misunderstand Russia’s purpose in interfering with elections. It isn’t to “get their guy” elected. It is to destabilize the democracy. The goal was to get a crazy guy elected, and throw the country into chaos. I believe they succeeded in destabilizing democracy in the U.S.
You might be right.
But “get the crazy guy elected” got the “crazy, like a fox” guy instead. Even if the USA democracy is destabilized, the economic cost to Russia (petroleum futures) might make this venture too costly.
That said, I still say, you might be right.
“Thorn, what have these news to do with computer and / or operating systems?”
Policy issues are as an important part of IT as hardware and software. And if there are vitally important systems that are proven to be vulnerable, policies – or the lack of them – targeted to fixing or diminishing those vulnerabilities are also important related issues which are worth talking about. One might not agree with such policies – or the fact of such policies being non-existent or their establishment being hindered -, but that doesn’t mean such issues should not be addressed and discussed. For non-US voters/people the topic might be interesting also from the point of view that almost everyone seems to be clear about the IT/tech-vulnerabilities of the US voting system, and it’s just weird that they don’t really seem to be willing to do anything about it – at least from what can be seen publicly.
Copy/Paste from literally the first item in the FAQ (https://www.osnews.com/faq/)
Not all of your stories are about operating systems, but your site is called OSNews. What gives?
OSNews is not just about operating systems. We report on other technology news, on development issues and articles, hardware, and if it is a slow news day, we might kick in some sci-fi movie news or other stuff we might find interesting. Our motto is “Exploring the Future of Computing,” and we do just that… and more. While we try to focus on all major news about operating systems, ultimately, we report on a range of technologies and anything else we think our readers might find interesting.
Are you drunk? How is this not related to computers and technology? How is this political? Are we offending people who are against fair elections or something? Are you an actual reader of this site or just a troll? I see you created an account just today and are also somehow not aware that Thom’s position is he will write about what the hell likes to on his blog. Don’t like it? I would suggest you go somewhere else or even better create your blog.
Considering how pervasive technology is in daily lives – software and hardware together – public policy w/r to new tech is extremely important.
Russian interference has reached OSNews judging by this post by ‘osnewsuser’
Fits the MO
Trying to steer the narrative
jmorgannz,
Over the course of it’s history, it’s quite possible osnews has been hit by corporate shills (employed by apple or whoever to help paint the company in a favorable light). Granted it’s hard to tell for sure in any given instance, but sometimes the indicators seem to point towards that.
However, I don’t think osnews would be a good outlet for russian propaganda. It was mostly the less educated who voted for trump, and those are the kinds of crowds that would get them the most bang for their buck. Not to say they couldn’t be here, but it’d make more sense to target low hanging fruit first.
Funny that, of course it is not like these Senate Committees reports were not complete BS before.
I think US need to start cleaning it is own house before pointing fingers at Russia or China for any small set back or political problem they have.
“We can’t fix any particular problem until we have fixed all other problems.”
Also: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Whataboutism
“At this point, one has to wonder what kind of videos the Russians have of McConnell” Without having read the bills it impossible to know if they are good bills. I don’t think most Republican Senators support poor election security, in fact there is plenty of fear of domestic democrat operatives interfering in elections. Look to last years Florida Senate and gubernatorial elections and the elections in Georgia proof. In addition local parties have done it in the past, look into Chicago in the JFK election. The second bill is especially problematic, while taking foreign monetary contributions is already clearly prohibited, divining non monetary aid may be too hard for campaigns to manage. The first bill sounds good from the news coverage, but the fact that not a single republican supported makes me think it may have some partisan poison pills, perhaps blocking voter ID efforts Republicans worry about.
As for the Russian Hackers compromising election commissions in all 50 states. Did the Russians place RAC software on polling machines, or did that phish a password and read some emails? While both things are bad, one of these things is worse than the other. Knowing what is real and FUD is important to know the extent of the problems.
There is no enormity in the world that J̶e̶w̶s̶ Russians cannot be blamed for. Plus ça change!