Device driver etc election CT

[Wudang]

I'm posting this in Computers and Internet because I want some appropriate techies. This article was posted on FB by RoadToad.

She Won. They Didn't Just Change the Machines. They Rewired the Election.

How Leonard Leo's 2021 sale of an electronics firm enabled tech giants to subvert the 2024 election.

substack.com

Now I am skeptical of some of the claims but it's not my area of expertise - device drivers, USB specifications etc. I was gobsmacked when I read about tyre pressure sensors being an attack surface for Teslas for example. link

in America’s elections, Tripp Lite devices were something else entirely.

They are physically connected to ES&S central tabulators and Electionware servers, and Dominion tabulators and central servers across the country. And they aren’t dumb devices. They are smart UPS units—programmable, updatable, and capable of communicating directly with the election system via USB, serial port, or Ethernet.

I know some guys here write embedded code and similar. Does pass/fail anybody's sniff test? It's a field where even what little I know is probably outdated.

 

[theprestige]

The tech part is accurate. But most theoretical cyber-attack vectors aren't easy to implement unless you're already in a position to subvert the computer system in question more simply and directly.

IMO this should be moved to CTs, because it's not really about what could be done in theory, or what hacking researchers are able to demonstrate in a lab. It's about whether certain parties had the means, motive, and opportunity to hack specific things in specific ways in specific times and places; and that they actually did so; and that this explains the observed outcomes.

ETA: The narrative here is, "Big Tech wanted Trump to win; this is a theoretically feasible way to make that happen; that's what happened; therefore Big Tech did this to make Trump win."

It's not the "theoretically feasible" clause that matters here. It's the concatenation of the other clauses that makes this a CT question, not a tech question.

 

[The Great Zaganza]

the CT rests on different systems, many of which were employed only in a few areas, to be all compromised in the same way without triggering any suspicion and audit.
While there seemed to have been a lot of irregularities in the 2024 elections, voting machine and counting systems have not be high on the list of problems - partially because many counties stopped using them after the 2020 fraud lies.

 

[Beelzebuddy]

Is it feasible that the election was stolen? Yes. Experts have pointed out for years that election infrastructure is terribly vulnerable at every level. The only thing voting machine companies can defend against successfully is political committees threatening audits. Just this year Diebold was found to have publicly posted a picture of its master keys. That's just the latest turd on the pile, these are trash companies who really shouldn't be trusted with anything.

But just because it could be stolen, was it?

The best argument for the election being stolen is how openly and badly the Republicans want to steal it. "Every accusation is a confession" has held up remarkably well, and MAGAts still refuse to believe the 2020 election wasn't stolen. If they didn't steal 2024 in return, they really wanted to and probably tried a bunch of different ways. Also Trump outright said they stole the election a few times, but he says a lot of stupid crap that isn't true so no one puts much stock in grandpa's mumbling these days.

The best argument against the election being stolen is the hack (if any) being competent and subtle coupled with an administration full of feckless hateful yahoos that are anything but those two qualities. Felon, Melon, Brainworm, Nosferatu, etc, these are not cool operators who could steal a whole election leaving behind only suspicious glances. We've seen them in action, the whole lot of them are putzes. They are small, venal men who rely on brash audacity and incredible luck to smash everything they can and come away holding most of the pieces. If they were to steal an election, it would pivot on one county returning 3000% of the vote (all of them cast by John Barron), a panel to vote by 3(R) to 2(D) to certify the election anyway, and media coverage to shrug and say "well nothing in the rules says a dog can't play basketball!"

This is leaning toward politics rather than intertubes, but though I'm receptive to any actual evidence that the election was tampered with, on balance I'd assign the blame of defeat to America being a bunch of racist bigots who, when it came right down to it, were never going to vote for a Black woman even if that meant Trump in office again. If the Dem ticket were Waltz/Harris it would have been a landslide. Minor points to the Democrats' relentless centrism in the late stages of the campaign tho, demonstrating once again that pissing away your core constituencies pursuing "undecideds" in the political middle who wind up voting Republican anyway is consistently a near-winning strategy. Stick with it, guys, maybe it'll work next time.

 

[Wudang]

Yeah fair enough. I guess I’ll maybe ask the mods to either move to CT or deep six it.