Discussion: DHS Comes Under Fire For Delay In Notifying States Of Russia Cyberattacks

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“This was simply not true and DHS acknowledged they failed to contact us and ‘two or three’ other states,” Padilla said.The hackers efforts’ did not affect election results or the systems themselves.

They mainly consisted of attempts to scan the systems for vulnerabilities.

This keeps being repeated - the idea that the efforts did not affect results or the systems, but never with sufficient information to explain how we verified this.

Given that the Administration has created a bogus election commission that pays no attention to these issues, but instead seems to serve 2 goals: fake evidence to “prove” that 3 million undocumented people voted illegally, and 2) fulfill Kobach’s dear desire of getting as many people who might vote for democrats disallowed from voting, given all that, it doesn’t seem wise to accept that assertion without any fact/verification.

And lying to congress about notifying states that their systems had been under attack by Russia? There would be a hectoring subcommittee, hoopla, a nickname + Gate which would be pushed across the rwing media had this happened during the Obama Admin (like with the $12 muffins), or if we had a H. Clinton Administration.

What was it Duncan Hunter said about Trump? Something like: He’s an Asshole (in real person), but he’s our asshole. Guess with the whole ‘45’ Administration its : Ya their incompetent/are acting with malfeasance, but their our incompetents/malefactors.

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What? Not Michigan and Florida?

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OK, here’s the elephant in the room: the DHS should not be notifying states about port-scanning intrusion attempts or reconnaissance. Anyone who has a site that is of national importance should have or hire the expertise to be looking at their own damn logs to see whether that kind of thing is going on. And it should be happening in real time. I bet TPM could tell you within a day how many connections they were getting from known-russian IPs.

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According to tRUMP this is a hoax!
According to tRUMP Russia is OK!
tRUMP loves Russia and would never insult ol’ Pooty-poot!
Fake news!

What a parliament of whores, grifters and chiselers.

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The DHS is a bigger, more expensive joke than the (Shrubya) administration that first dreamed it up. OTOH if you consider it the world’s largest Kabuki theater troupe on the planet it’s an unqualified (emphasis on unqualified) success.

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I would doubt that cyberattacks would come directly from Russian IPs. More likely Russians based in US

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So they say.

Trump, however, declared that the election was rigged.

There is one thing that would explain Trump’s love affair with Russia, and Republican’s silence about it: they know Russians flipped some votes.

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We have to always remember how thorough the opposition is in their voter suppression. In fact, there is no other area of governance, certainly not policy, where they explore and exploit every angle and detail to reach their desired end–preventing the “wrong” people from voting.

So, added to the always ongoing Republican voter suppression, it wouldn’t take much in the form of Russian mischief–messed up voter roles here and there or, more likely, the ongoing campaign of disinformation–just enough to push some undecideds into the other camp. Or just enough to pit Progressives against more mainstream Dems.

It was all of it together, a toxic brew.

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Sersiously, he has the most flawless projection of all time. I knew it was rigged the minute he said it - rigged for him. And don’t try telling me that Mitch McConnell was saving an open seat on the SCOTUS for Hillary Clinton. He knew it was rigged, too.

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These are about the states where it wasn’t successful…

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I do know because the Dallas Co. election officials were open about it - they found 17 Russian intrusion attempts in our voting software. But not before the election because they didn’t know to look.

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This comment misses the point of the article: DHS had collected information that was important to the states, and chose not to share it. Whether the states had collected the same information on their own is somewhat beside the point. The failure to share information about a serious wide-scale threat in a timely fashion goes against the very purpose of DHS. This is exactly the sort of thing the DHS was set up to do in the first place: to track and mitigate threats to the United States as a whole.

Individual states have widely divergent standards of security, and can’t be expected to invest in cyber forensics at the same level as the federal government. That kind of duplication would be a waste of money and resources. It doesn’t make sense to rely on 50 different levels of security against a threat that potentially effects the entire country. As the article said, this wasn’t an attack, it was a fishing expedition likely in preparation for later attacks. States certainly should be supplying information to DHS about the threats they receive individually, but it is up to DHS to coordinate and operate at the national level.

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Yep. But remember, Russia is our friend, and no doubt was only checking to make sure our systems were secure. No reason to worry, none at all. In fact, they’re helping us do away with elections altogether - after all, we bitch and moan anytime one happens, so it’s obviously a kindness.

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Break in? Looks to me like Republicans are just inviting them in.

If Russian intelligence can seize the largest international corporations, conduct international espionage, indoctrinate the upper-eschelon of the right wing, get Flynn working for them, get Manifort to beg to give them national secrets, blackmail Trump…

How hard would it be to get a few tech engineers — maybe, compromised American technicians — into a position to help flip a few digital numbers?

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That’s because it doesnt need to be verified, because no one involved in running the system wants to deal with the implications of it not being true. So everyone involved simply insists it must be true that the efforts had no effect on the legitimacy of the results. Whether it is actually true or not is besides the point, because no one in a place to do anything about it wants to deal with the crisis that would result from admiting the entire system has been deligitimized.

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The hackers efforts’ did not affect election results or the systems themselves. They mainly consisted of attempts to scan the systems for vulnerabilities.

I don’t buy this, and neither should any responsible news outlet. I’m actually shocked to read it on TPM of all places.

In order for the quoted statement to be true, we would have to know (1) exactly which attacks occurred in relation to each state, and (2) precisely how and why each cyberattack fell short of altering current or future vote tallies; because it seems unlikely, or at least counterintuitive, that a hostile power with an extraordinary technological capacity and a clearly established purpose to advance the interests of the GOP over those of the Democrats somehow failed to corrupt an election process that (as has been demonstrated) even amateur freelancers can attack and corrupt.

Most important, this being an administration led by a president who insists that the cyberattacks did not happen, we would have to have access to all relevant DHS documents and records to verify the answers given to these two questions.

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Well I’m glad SOMEONE’S paying attention.

It makes me feel less alone.:wink:

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You’re right about DHS, wrong about the states. Of course DHS should be sharing information – even with the states whose officials have rejected offer of help. But if states can’t do at least some of this work themselves, they’re criminally irresponsible, because DHS can’t be holding their hands 24/7.

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Hopefully Mueller is also looking into this.

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