7 ms·

Russian Hack of Elections System Was Far-Reaching, Report Finds

53 points by kediz 7y ago

kediz 7y ago
If this far-reaching hack succeed, it might be the end of Democracy as we know it: Now the elected official has a vested-interest not to deter foreign hacking and the vicious cycle might go on.
- ggggtez 7y ago
  People always have incentives to commit crimes. That's why police and prosecutors have to make good on threats to ensure their "best interests" line up with everyone else.
- Fej 7y ago
  That's not just a hypothetical. From the article: > It also landed hours after Senator Mitch McConnell, the majority leader, personally stepped forward to block consideration of a package of election security bills. The Republicans are rejecting election security bills precisely because Russia has intervened to their benefit, and will probably continue to do so. President Trump has also openly asked for interference from Russia, if memory serves. These attacks are acts of war and we need to start treating them as such. That won't happen as long as those attacks benefit those in power.
  - youareostriches 7y ago
    It would seem that the first step would be to delegitimize those election results and any ensuing laws or orders from those officials.
    - kediz 7y ago
      Then de-legitimization might become a weapon of its own right...
    - rabidrat 7y ago
      The problem is that if/when the Democrats win, the Republicans will use the same tactics and delegitimize those election results. We are effectively living in two forked realities with no way to rejoin them.
      - youareostriches 7y ago
        If it’s a problem of election fraud then we can fix this in 2020 with all paper ballots and a restoration of the voting rights act. Unfortunately violence might be necessary if fair elections can’t be guaranteed.
      - tareqak 7y ago
        In some other countries, foreign election monitors are routinely invited to monitor elections. They aren't all-seeing or all-knowing, but they can at least highlight irregularities in the voting process.
        marcusverus 7y ago
        What type of issue would you expect these monitors to prevent or uncover? Election monitors make sense in third-world countries, where elections are administrated by corrupt government officials and literal ballot-box-stuffing is a possibility. But in the US, civilian volunteers with known party affiliations administer elections, and many states cast ballots electronically. If you’re really concerned about the integrity of our elections at a ballot-box level, the best thing you could do would be to volunteer to administer elections in your local precinct.
        tareqak 7y ago
        It's an extra check on the whole system with a known cost. People could voluntarily go on exchange trips to other countries when they have their elections. If foreign election monitors state that some places didn't have enough ballot boxes, then it will be more difficult to ignore that sort of problem as business as usual.
  - JudgeWapner 7y ago
    > These attacks are acts of war They're no different than what lobbyists do. Just that the beneficiary is another country instead of a corporation. The oval office (and Congress) are for sale. They have been this whole time. Hillary Clinton amassed $1.4 bn in campaign funds. That kind of money doesn't come from everyday working class people. As an American citizen, I see nothing worse about Russia buying a candidate than any corporate lobby. Either way my vote doesn't matter, my voice doesn't count, and the only thing politicians will do in our name is throw us a bone now and then with "win-win" legislation like banning robocalls. Anything else immediately becomes a "partisan issue" subject to whatever lobby paid them the most to do (and will cost them reelection if they vote otherwise). Meanwhile my health insurance is still going up 10% per year, a college degree means a lifetime of indentured servitude, and corporations are getting away with whatever they want. Please, any country: hack us. I don't fucking care.
    - craigkilgo 7y ago
      If you have a health plan that only goes up 10% a year, please let me know where to find it.
    - jessaustin 7y ago
      Careful now, on HN we're not supposed to recognize the First Amendment. Free speech is not meant for us subjects.
  - belorn 7y ago
    There is no evidence that any votes were changed in actual voting machines. The committee found no evidence that voter data in the Illinois voter database was deleted or changed. The report do not say that Russia intervened in regard to voting machines or the Illinois voter database. The report simply state that Russia were in a position to do so. A few years ago there were a bunch of leaks from inside NSA by Snowden. One of of the leaks documented how NSA had hacked into core telecom routers of a country in the middle of a civil war. NSA was very much in the position to intervene for either side. The US would be in quite many wars if everything NSA did should be seen as acts of war and treated as such. They even hacked the UN.
    - Fej 7y ago
      To quote a headline from the Esquire: "We're Supposed to Believe the Russians Hacked Into Voting Systems But Did Nothing Once They Got There?"
- i_feel_great 7y ago
  Americans have been hacking other countries' elections for decades. But now it has happened to America, it will cause the collapse of democracy. What, really?
  - kediz 7y ago
    lol you are right. Its a crooked world we live in
cwkoss 7y ago
Are technical details on what they actually did publicly available? Was this just a portscan and someone logging into an unsecured database? Did they use a zero day or was a system unpatched with a known vulnerability?
- ericras 7y ago
  This has been my problem with the Russia story. We never get enough detail to make our own judgement of the severity of this. The media and the Democrats lump everything together under the umbrella of “Russia hacked our election/democracy”. Aside from the nonsensical nature of that statement, it has been a catch-all term for everything from Facebook ads to hacking some state commission’s Wordpress site that contained no secure data.... to possibly real hacks of important systems which are still classified. I really don’t care about the former but the later would be a big deal.
  - zelon88 7y ago
    Lets ignore the nomenclature for a minute. Russians used American social media to manipulate public opinion to help implement a Russian sympathizing Administration. Ignore the verbiage. Start with that.
    - jessaustin 7y ago
      That sounds like a great thing to raise as an issue in an election. Lots of voters might care about that. However, we have a First Amendment, so it's not against the law for anyone to talk to anyone else. That's the case whether it's some weird social media thing like those pictures of Bernie with big muscles or an actual true fact like that the DNC staff sent emails to each other discussing how they had screwed over Bernie. That is strictly legal, whether it is done by Russians or by the Citizens United dudes or by the actual Wikipedia source.
      - FuckButtons 7y ago
        The first amendment does not protect the right of foreign nations to dispense propaganda. Indeed there are in fact provisions prohibiting foreign nations involving themselves in the election process in the US constitution.
40acres 7y ago
I don't understand Mitch McConnell's reluctance to passing an election security measure, I would've that assumed that a voter suppression strategy that utilized the new law would be finalized by now.
- ericras 7y ago
  You would have to know more about the proposals he blocked to have an informed opinion. This is such a surface level strife of McConnell that it’s close to “why won’t he think of the children?” The article should have linked to a previous story specifically about that proposed legislation.
  - johnsolo1701 7y ago
    > Sen. Richard Blumenthal (D-Conn.) also asked for consent to pass legislation that would require candidates, campaign officials and their family members to notify the FBI of assistance offers from foreign governments. > McConnell also objected to that bill. Make up your own mind.
    - m0zg 7y ago
      100% chance it wasn't the only thing in that bill. It also opens up any candidate, democratic or republican, to FISA surveillance down the line, which is something that I can guarantee will be abused at some point. In fact it already _was_ abused against Trump. FISA warrants to spy on his campaign were obtained by misleading the FISA court with what we now know was fake evidence. There's also a strong possibility that McConell wants voter ID, which is something the Democrats are strangely reluctant to introduce even though it's quite a popular thing to require: Mexico, for instance, does have voter ID. I'm hypothesizing here, I haven't read the bill, but then neither have you, so you're "making up your own mind" based on a shallow regurgitation of democrat talking points and without any critical thinking.
      - johnsolo1701 7y ago
        I have read the bill. https://www.govtrack.us/congress/bills/116/s1247/text https://www.govtrack.us/congress/bills/116/s1247/text It sounds reasonable to me.
acqq 7y ago
However, from the coverage by Think Progress: "The heavily redacted, 67-page report found no evidence that Russia was able to alter vote counts in 2016, when Russia carried out what Mueller’s final report called a “sweeping and systematic” hacking and disinformation campaign."
- johnsolo1701 7y ago
  Isn't the whole point of the disinformation campaign to make people vote a certain way? With this in mind, altering votes _directly_ by hacking voting machines isn't necessarily the problem people are worried about. It's indirectly changing votes due to the foreign assistance/misinformation, which is illegal under our system. I think it's a reasonable concern and we shouldn't ignore it, just because votes weren't changed directly by hacking. A law that requires campaigns to disclose to authorities if they receive illegal offers of assistance is sensible IMHO.
  - marcusverus 7y ago
    The title of the article seems taylor-made to suggest that Russia hacked voting machines. That’s what prompted the top level response. The headline is misleading. Nobody suggested that Russian disinformation is unimportant.
jessaustin 7y ago
NYT yesterday: "Mueller Hearings Present Make-or-Break Moment" NYT today: TFA. We wondered what they were going to do in response to the dud that the hearings turned out to be. That confused old man learned more about his report than we did! MFW it seems possible they might actually talk about real problems rather than fairy tales... People of good faith have been warning of the flaws in election infrastructure since long before Obama made his "of course the elections can't be rigged" comments [0]. There are lots of flaws with voting machines: closed source, no tangible verifiable records, confusing for voters, etc. There are lots of flaws with voting in general: voters removed for specious reasons, greater inconvenience for poor voters, one-party-two-heads, etc. Actually now that I hear it again, what Obama had to say makes a lot of sense to me... how do the anonymous-yet-somehow-official sources account for this? Sure, someone could cheat in a small number of precincts, but if they try to affect a national election using a small number of precincts they're definitely going to inspire recounts. It's too bad that Congress won't pass Tulsi's bill that would require recountable paper records... [0] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UcjaO2953os https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UcjaO2953os
deleted 7y ago
[deleted]

53 points by kediz 7y ago

If this far-reaching hack succeed, it might be the end of Democracy as we know it: Now the elected official has a vested-interest not to deter foreign hacking and the vicious cycle might go on.

ggggtez 7y ago
People always have incentives to commit crimes. That's why police and prosecutors have to make good on threats to ensure their "best interests" line up with everyone else.
Fej 7y ago
That's not just a hypothetical. From the article: > It also landed hours after Senator Mitch McConnell, the majority leader, personally stepped forward to block consideration of a package of election security bills. The Republicans are rejecting election security bills precisely because Russia has intervened to their benefit, and will probably continue to do so. President Trump has also openly asked for interference from Russia, if memory serves. These attacks are acts of war and we need to start treating them as such. That won't happen as long as those attacks benefit those in power.
- youareostriches 7y ago
  It would seem that the first step would be to delegitimize those election results and any ensuing laws or orders from those officials.
  - kediz 7y ago
    Then de-legitimization might become a weapon of its own right...
  - rabidrat 7y ago
    The problem is that if/when the Democrats win, the Republicans will use the same tactics and delegitimize those election results. We are effectively living in two forked realities with no way to rejoin them.
    - youareostriches 7y ago
      If it’s a problem of election fraud then we can fix this in 2020 with all paper ballots and a restoration of the voting rights act. Unfortunately violence might be necessary if fair elections can’t be guaranteed.
    - tareqak 7y ago
      In some other countries, foreign election monitors are routinely invited to monitor elections. They aren't all-seeing or all-knowing, but they can at least highlight irregularities in the voting process.
      - marcusverus 7y ago
        What type of issue would you expect these monitors to prevent or uncover? Election monitors make sense in third-world countries, where elections are administrated by corrupt government officials and literal ballot-box-stuffing is a possibility. But in the US, civilian volunteers with known party affiliations administer elections, and many states cast ballots electronically. If you’re really concerned about the integrity of our elections at a ballot-box level, the best thing you could do would be to volunteer to administer elections in your local precinct.
        tareqak 7y ago
        It's an extra check on the whole system with a known cost. People could voluntarily go on exchange trips to other countries when they have their elections. If foreign election monitors state that some places didn't have enough ballot boxes, then it will be more difficult to ignore that sort of problem as business as usual.
- JudgeWapner 7y ago
  > These attacks are acts of war They're no different than what lobbyists do. Just that the beneficiary is another country instead of a corporation. The oval office (and Congress) are for sale. They have been this whole time. Hillary Clinton amassed $1.4 bn in campaign funds. That kind of money doesn't come from everyday working class people. As an American citizen, I see nothing worse about Russia buying a candidate than any corporate lobby. Either way my vote doesn't matter, my voice doesn't count, and the only thing politicians will do in our name is throw us a bone now and then with "win-win" legislation like banning robocalls. Anything else immediately becomes a "partisan issue" subject to whatever lobby paid them the most to do (and will cost them reelection if they vote otherwise). Meanwhile my health insurance is still going up 10% per year, a college degree means a lifetime of indentured servitude, and corporations are getting away with whatever they want. Please, any country: hack us. I don't fucking care.
  - craigkilgo 7y ago
    If you have a health plan that only goes up 10% a year, please let me know where to find it.
  - jessaustin 7y ago
    Careful now, on HN we're not supposed to recognize the First Amendment. Free speech is not meant for us subjects.
- belorn 7y ago
  There is no evidence that any votes were changed in actual voting machines. The committee found no evidence that voter data in the Illinois voter database was deleted or changed. The report do not say that Russia intervened in regard to voting machines or the Illinois voter database. The report simply state that Russia were in a position to do so. A few years ago there were a bunch of leaks from inside NSA by Snowden. One of of the leaks documented how NSA had hacked into core telecom routers of a country in the middle of a civil war. NSA was very much in the position to intervene for either side. The US would be in quite many wars if everything NSA did should be seen as acts of war and treated as such. They even hacked the UN.
  - Fej 7y ago
    To quote a headline from the Esquire: "We're Supposed to Believe the Russians Hacked Into Voting Systems But Did Nothing Once They Got There?"
i_feel_great 7y ago
Americans have been hacking other countries' elections for decades. But now it has happened to America, it will cause the collapse of democracy. What, really?
- kediz 7y ago
  lol you are right. Its a crooked world we live in

cwkoss 7y ago

Are technical details on what they actually did publicly available? Was this just a portscan and someone logging into an unsecured database? Did they use a zero day or was a system unpatched with a known vulnerability?

ericras 7y ago
This has been my problem with the Russia story. We never get enough detail to make our own judgement of the severity of this. The media and the Democrats lump everything together under the umbrella of “Russia hacked our election/democracy”. Aside from the nonsensical nature of that statement, it has been a catch-all term for everything from Facebook ads to hacking some state commission’s Wordpress site that contained no secure data.... to possibly real hacks of important systems which are still classified. I really don’t care about the former but the later would be a big deal.
- zelon88 7y ago
  Lets ignore the nomenclature for a minute. Russians used American social media to manipulate public opinion to help implement a Russian sympathizing Administration. Ignore the verbiage. Start with that.
  - jessaustin 7y ago
    That sounds like a great thing to raise as an issue in an election. Lots of voters might care about that. However, we have a First Amendment, so it's not against the law for anyone to talk to anyone else. That's the case whether it's some weird social media thing like those pictures of Bernie with big muscles or an actual true fact like that the DNC staff sent emails to each other discussing how they had screwed over Bernie. That is strictly legal, whether it is done by Russians or by the Citizens United dudes or by the actual Wikipedia source.
    - FuckButtons 7y ago
      The first amendment does not protect the right of foreign nations to dispense propaganda. Indeed there are in fact provisions prohibiting foreign nations involving themselves in the election process in the US constitution.

40acres 7y ago

I don't understand Mitch McConnell's reluctance to passing an election security measure, I would've that assumed that a voter suppression strategy that utilized the new law would be finalized by now.

ericras 7y ago
You would have to know more about the proposals he blocked to have an informed opinion. This is such a surface level strife of McConnell that it’s close to “why won’t he think of the children?” The article should have linked to a previous story specifically about that proposed legislation.
- johnsolo1701 7y ago
  > Sen. Richard Blumenthal (D-Conn.) also asked for consent to pass legislation that would require candidates, campaign officials and their family members to notify the FBI of assistance offers from foreign governments. > McConnell also objected to that bill. Make up your own mind.
  - m0zg 7y ago
    100% chance it wasn't the only thing in that bill. It also opens up any candidate, democratic or republican, to FISA surveillance down the line, which is something that I can guarantee will be abused at some point. In fact it already _was_ abused against Trump. FISA warrants to spy on his campaign were obtained by misleading the FISA court with what we now know was fake evidence. There's also a strong possibility that McConell wants voter ID, which is something the Democrats are strangely reluctant to introduce even though it's quite a popular thing to require: Mexico, for instance, does have voter ID. I'm hypothesizing here, I haven't read the bill, but then neither have you, so you're "making up your own mind" based on a shallow regurgitation of democrat talking points and without any critical thinking.
    - johnsolo1701 7y ago
      I have read the bill. https://www.govtrack.us/congress/bills/116/s1247/text https://www.govtrack.us/congress/bills/116/s1247/text It sounds reasonable to me.

acqq 7y ago

However, from the coverage by Think Progress: "The heavily redacted, 67-page report found no evidence that Russia was able to alter vote counts in 2016, when Russia carried out what Mueller’s final report called a “sweeping and systematic” hacking and disinformation campaign."

johnsolo1701 7y ago
Isn't the whole point of the disinformation campaign to make people vote a certain way? With this in mind, altering votes _directly_ by hacking voting machines isn't necessarily the problem people are worried about. It's indirectly changing votes due to the foreign assistance/misinformation, which is illegal under our system. I think it's a reasonable concern and we shouldn't ignore it, just because votes weren't changed directly by hacking. A law that requires campaigns to disclose to authorities if they receive illegal offers of assistance is sensible IMHO.
- marcusverus 7y ago
  The title of the article seems taylor-made to suggest that Russia hacked voting machines. That’s what prompted the top level response. The headline is misleading. Nobody suggested that Russian disinformation is unimportant.

jessaustin 7y ago

NYT yesterday: "Mueller Hearings Present Make-or-Break Moment" NYT today: TFA. We wondered what they were going to do in response to the dud that the hearings turned out to be. That confused old man learned more about his report than we did! MFW it seems possible they might actually talk about real problems rather than fairy tales... People of good faith have been warning of the flaws in election infrastructure since long before Obama made his "of course the elections can't be rigged" comments [0]. There are lots of flaws with voting machines: closed source, no tangible verifiable records, confusing for voters, etc. There are lots of flaws with voting in general: voters removed for specious reasons, greater inconvenience for poor voters, one-party-two-heads, etc. Actually now that I hear it again, what Obama had to say makes a lot of sense to me... how do the anonymous-yet-somehow-official sources account for this? Sure, someone could cheat in a small number of precincts, but if they try to affect a national election using a small number of precincts they're definitely going to inspire recounts. It's too bad that Congress won't pass Tulsi's bill that would require recountable paper records... [0] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UcjaO2953os https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UcjaO2953os

deleted 7y ago

[deleted]