Was IoT DDoS attack just a dry run for election day hijinks? The distributed denial of service attack that took down DNS provider Dyn, and with it access to a chunk of the internet, was one of the largest such assaults seen. The attack exploited Internet of Things devices – notably webcams built by XiongMai Technologies. The gadgets had default login passwords that allowed them to be …
Doesn't this make everyone glad that there's no online voting? The last time electronic voting machines were used in my area, they stored the tally on the machines, then collected them when voting was done. Now it's by paper ballots, mailed in.
Imagine for a moment if there was online voting, and the national election system suffered a DDOS when the polls "opened."
What aspect of modern elections relies on internet functionality?
Depends on the country. Here in the UK, the election itself is completely manual though the register of electors is often handled digitally and registration is increasingly available via the internet. I've heard rumblings of changes to all that though with more than one clueless non-techie insisting that putting the whole process on the net will make it "better".
One-Button Syndrome* is alive and well.
*One-Button Syndrome: An affliction of those with little or no exposure to technology that leads them to think that technology can solve any problem like magic. All it takes is the press of one button...
Maybe not disruptive to the actual voting and tallying but the reporting to State level and to the media? There's been some speculation that the earlier attacks were testing for something really big by commentards here and other places on this. There's other possible targets besides the US election but disrupting this would be a big deal to whoever organized it.
There is no way to have a system that's easy enough to be understood by everyone and involve computers. Once you have a computer, the average person has no chance of understanding it any more and therefore no chance of having informed trust in it.
Pen and paper systems may be easy to fake, but they are also very easy to understand and check. Particularly if you hold elections on sunday or a public holiday, everyone has the chance to check that election... or even be involved in it by volunteering to run it. (you get a small amount of money for that)
Usually pen and paper systems are also rather quick to count. In Germany the polls close at 18:00, and at 20:00 you already have the full result for the news.
So badly, you'll be pining for the days of Bush 2.0. Of course that assumes that one can tell the difference since there will still be troops and fighting in, near, and around Syria/Iraq, the world economy will continue to muddle along with spurts of tepid growth and periods of contraction, more refugees will flee the war torn regions in the Middle East and Africa, and some politically minded people will get disjointed because they didn't get their way. So pretty much same shite, different day regardless of whose monkey wins.
I suppose people relying on the internet to find out where their polling place is located would be affected, but it isn't going to take out voting machines which aren't internet connected. I don't know if it was still true, but back in 2012 they described the process most states use to upload local results to the state for tabulation and it was based on modems and in some cases even faxes. I doubt there's a whole lot of reliance on the internet, and where there is they probably have a backup method.
I suppose having the internet "go down" during election day / election night could feed into the meme some are trying to spread about the election being rigged if they don't get the result they like...
Given the unprecedented volume and amplitude of wingnuttery this time, knocking the Fox News website offline for a couple of hours would be enough to have a fair few good ol' boys reaching for the ammo and freaking out all over social media. The whole Trump phenomena is the result of the lack of widely trusted authoritative news outlets (they exist, but they're not trusted by a significant fraction of the population.) They're like a big flock of nervous pigeons. Pigeons with assault rifles. It wouldn't take much to get them freaking the feck out.
"...with hilarious consequences!"
"I suppose having the internet "go down" during election day / election night could feed into the meme some are trying to spread about the election being rigged if they don't get the result they like..."
Do not underestimate this.
There won't be a civil war because of this election, not even if there's a cyber attack providing fuel for the FUD. However, there is currently a trend of distrust in democracy that, in the long run, can become a major problem, and a DDoS on election day would definitely not help.
What a concoction of half-baked rumormongering, "industry" soundbites and dark mutterings.
And then this:
While Trump has encouraged Russian hackers to attack government systems
No he didn't.
Can we now talk about Hillary Clinton's evident link to satanism? 665 Gbps? More like 666 Gbps!
I did indeed. Unfortunately, though, with the population of this country being what it is, I can't remember how to spell everybody's name...
Which is why I looked up the spelling of her last name, and completely failed to notice the spelling of her first name. D'oh! Obvious icon is obvious.
Electronic Voting
E-Voting is a terrible idea.
Look how much it cost the Irish government when they tried to roll it out years ago. The machines were found to be woefully insecure
http://www.independent.ie/irish-news/54m-voting-machines-scrapped-for-9-each-26870212.html
http://www.thejournal.ie/e-voting-machines-disposed-phil-hogan-environment-fiasco-503678-Jun2012/
Voting systems should never be online. At least the old fashioned X marks the spot cannot be manipulated en masse with people taking notice.
So you have a choice, vote for a woman, whose families dealings have been described as organised crime and while in office, has been a complete failure and only cares about those with money and power and the tag 1st Woman Prez or a sexist, narcissistic, un-PC, slightly racist, short tempered but proven business brain, who wants to put the USA right. So glad in the UK we have a choice of woman wants to be a Mrs.T clone and unelectable bearded, weirdo muppet !
Voting machines are not connected to the Internet in most states in the US. These machines are palced temporary palces like school gym, churches, libraries and what not.
Suppoes, one can break into the chip card, which pretty damn hard without some collusion.
Stop spreading FUD and conspiracy theories.
The Register 
Biting the hand that feeds IT
Copyright. All rights reserved © 1998–2024
