Posted on 02/21/2017 9:42:20 PM PST by TigerClaws
Department of Homeland Security (DHS) officials tried to hack Indiana’s state electoral system with at least 14,800 “scans” or hits between Nov. 1, 2016, to Dec. 16, 2016, The Daily Caller News Foundation Investigative Group has learned.
The attacks are the second confirmed IT scanning assault by DHS officials against states that resisted then-President Barack Obama’s attempt to increase federal involvement in state and local election systems by designating them as “critical infrastructure” for national security.
Members of the National Association of Secretaries of State voted Saturday at their winter meeting to oppose the designation. They are asking President Donald Trump to overturn it. (RELATED: State Officials Want Trump To Reverse Obama’s Last-Minute Election Power Grab)
Former Indiana Gov. Mike Pence was also Trump’s vice presidential-elect during much of the period covered by the DHS scans of the Indiana system.
Indiana Secretary of State Connie Lawson, the incoming president of the association, told TheDCNF Tuesday that, “we know that between November 1 and December 16 we were scanned with about 14,800 scans, nearly 15,000 different times.”
The state’s IT team traced the intruder to a DHS computer’s IP address. The same DHS unit attempted 10 times in 2016 to hack into the Georgia electoral system.
Federal officials are barred under DHS rules from trying to penetrate a state system without the express approval of the state. Neither Georgia nor Indiana approved the DHS scanning attempts.
The DHS inspector general has launched an official investigation into the Georgia breach attempt.
Thomas Vessely, IT director for the Indiana secretary of state, told TheDCNF that “we kindly declined [DHS] assistance because we were very comfortable in the work we were doing in monitoring our election system.”
Lawson said she “always assumed it was because I was the incoming President of the National Association of Secretaries of State and because we declined their assistance.”
Georgia Secretary of State Brian Kemp told TheDCNF Jan. 24, 2016, he was suspicious because four of the 10 attacks against the Georgia election network occurred as he was about to talk to DHS officials, or coincided with his public testimony opposing the critical infrastructure designation.
“It’s certainly concerning about the dates,” Kemp said.
Kemp hopes the IG can determine if the hacks were timed to intimidate him.
Lawson said despite the scale of the scans, the DHS efforts to attack its election system was unsuccessful. “Our voter registration system was not penetrated.”
She said there was “one slight penetration on an (election) website that was actually old and out of date, so it didn’t go anywhere.”
Governmental deployment of IT technology could be an evolving new tool against political opponents or to impose censorship, according to James Scott, a senior fellow at the Institute for Critical Infrastructure Technology, a cybersecurity think tank.
“Censorship has always been an issue in the brick-and-mortar world. So, censorship in the digital landscape is simply just transference of methods,” Scott said. “I think within federal agencies it is possible to imagine that there are some overreaching, aggressive managers.”
Indiana officials have not yet asked the DHS IG to look at their state’s situation. “We’re taking the matter under consideration,” Lawson said, adding that “we have sent letters to our congressional folks, our governor, and others to make them aware this happened. I’m very concerned, very concerned.”
A DHS spokesman told TheDCNF that, “we take the trust of our partners in the public and private sectors seriously and will work with them to address any concerns. DHS does not conduct scans of networks or systems without the cooperation and consent of the system owner.”
Marc Lotter, a spokesman for Pence, told TheDCNF his boss personally knew Lawson while in Indiana and had complete confidence in her handling the attacks.
“The VP has tremendous faith in the Secretary of State and knows it’s in good hands,” said Marc. He’s sure she will handle it properly,” he said.
I need to look this up again but one thing I recall is a bunch of dead people were registered to vote (or something like that) and it was busted fairly quickly. There is also the voter ID hurdle problem for fraud so not sure exactly what the point would have been.
You are suggesting that they hacked into the state voting systems in order to add ineligible voters to the rolls?
Now, he's like a rotting black garbage bag full of pig guts.
I would be arresting Jeh Johnson.......
What I think the implication of a “successful hack” by DHS and changing just ONE voter as a test case would have become reason for BHO to take executive action to affect the election and it would give Democrats reason to say “we been hakk!” and invalidate the legitimacy of Trump’s win.
A suspicious person might think Obama's DHS was exploring ways to get into state election systems for clandestined purposes. To see if they could manipulate voting results by adding or substracting votes?
==
Then, there's 2016 election night when the major news outlets [online and broadcast] ceased releasing count updates to the public for several hours. During that interim they were looking for votes or ways to manipulate totals in select locations. When they realized they would have to show precincts with 120% to 130% voting for a certain candidate to push her over the top, they knew the jig was up.
Who knows. I was wondering if they were related. Nothing surprises me. Democrats cheat.
Fishing for some kernel of evidence, or planting the same that any states voting system was hacked to invalidate the election was the sole purpose.
The single most relaxing, uplifting, inspiring photo I’ve ever see - Thank You!
REFERENCE---Homeland Security seeks $41.2 billion budget for 2016
February 4, 2015 By BioPrepWatch Reports
Homeland Security Secretary Jeh Johnson announced a $41.2 billion budget request Monday for the 2016 fiscal year. The budget would improve the unity of effort at the department, Johnson said, focusing on harmonizing DHS business processes. Along with the budget, a new Common Appropriations Structure was also submitted to Congress, which would standardize financial planning, programming and budgets for all DH agencies, Johnson said.
There are five areas DHS focuses on each year, and the budget is in alignment with those five missions, Johnson said.
<><> The fourth mission deals with safeguarding and securing cyberspace, which impacts economic security. The 2016 budget would invest in technology and staff to reduce cybercrime and improve the security of federal network defenses.
============================================
ACTION NOW Contact your Representative and Senators
Capitol Switchboard 1-866-220-0044
DHS AUDIT DHS AUDIT DHS AUDIT DHS
Demand to know where the money is going.
Anyone that has a computer, internet connection and room temperature IQ can port scan a server. Just download an NMAP scanner and pick an IP address. You can quickly write a shell script to incrementally scan a range of IP’s and log the results.
There are “ethical hackers” that do this for a living. They scan 24 hours day and once they find an open port, they get what data they can from it, contact the company/owner and accept a “gratuity” for finding the breach and returning the data. Cyber extortion is what it is.
Soros started a Secretaries of State project several years ago. Stated purpose was to ensure Soros toadies placed Dem friendly SOS’s in every state to guarantee election wins should their be a close contest.
Georgia Confirms Homeland Security Attempted To Hack Election Database 10 Separate Times
Yessir....Jeff Sessions is gonna have a REAL BUSY four years.
PING!!
Article and comments, esp #30 by Liz
Thanks, TigerClaws & Liz
Conspiracy Ping!
And Hellary and ValJar and Lynch and McShame and ....
Time to arrest and charge the hackers with Felonies.
Then offer them a plea bargain if they tell us who’s orders they were following.
What would make me like it even more would be flames arising from the bottom.
Let’s put somebody on the stand and ask those questions.
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