CrowdStrike, the internet security company that became infamous for its participation in the cover-up of the 2016 Democratic Party National Committee hacking incident is at the center of another disaster – the past weekend’s worldwide collapse of Microsoft-based computer systems.
All it took was one faulty CrowdStrike software update to cause global disruptions Friday that grounded flights, knocked banks and media outlets offline, and disrupted hospitals, retailers and other services.
How could one software company cause a worldwide computer system collapse?
Gregory Falco, an assistant professor of engineering at Cornell University explained it to the Associated Press this way: “What really causes this mess is that we rely on very few companies, and everybody uses the same folks, so everyone goes down at the same time.”
“Everybody uses the same folks” sounds an awful lot like the same problem election security operatives have been highlighting for years – the near monopoly Dominion Voting Systems has on electronic voting systems in America.
The U.S. Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency, which provides election security support to local election offices nationally, has recommended the use of CrowdStrike as a tool to detect phishing attacks.
Editor’s Note: Phishing attacks on computers not connected to the internet?
And sure enough, it turns out that CrowdStrike has contracts with many of the same jurisdictions that use Dominion Voting Systems equipment.
Can anyone explain how these Dominion voting machines that are not supposed to be connected to the internet were impacted by the CrowdStrike incident in Maricopa County, Arizona?
The breakdown affected the devices that Maricopa and Pima counties use at voting locations to check voters in, verify voter eligibility and print ballots.
Maricopa County, you may recall, was also struck by a strange Election Day computer malfunction in 2022 when about 1 in 5 polling locations in Maricopa County, Ariz., were experiencing a technical problem with their ballot tabulator machines.
"We've got about 20% of the locations out there where there's an issue with the tabulator," describing the problem officials said that after some voters filled out their ballot, the machine wouldn't accept it.
The result was long lines – strangely confined to majority Republican precincts – which caused many voters to abandon their place in line claimed observers.
The races for Arizona governor and Arizona attorney general were extremely tight, so any discrepancies could have played a role in the outcome. In the Attorney General race, just 280 votes divided the Democrat and Republican attorney general candidates, the narrow margin in the Governor’s election also triggered an automatic recount.
In response to the Election Day mess in Arizona, the America First Policy Institute conducted an audit of the 2022 Arizona election.
After six months of persistence with affected Arizona counties the precinct-level data for the six Arizona counties requested by the America First Policy Institute was received in full.
Analysis showed some precincts where there were more ballots being counted than there were registered voters listed as casting ballots and some precincts where the reverse occurred. Across these counties, 6,057 more ballots were recorded as cast than there were registered voters listed as voting. In precincts where the reverse was true, 2,184 more registered voters were listed as voting than ballots shown as counted. That results in an 8,241-vote discrepancy, or 0.36% of the total ballots counted. Some may say this is just a small discrepancy, but 0.36% amounts to 29.4 times the 280-vote difference in the Arizona attorney general race.
How could there be more ballots cast than there were registered voters listed as voting?
One way is for the devices that counties use at voting locations to check voters in, verify voter eligibility and print ballots to be corrupted or manipulated via an allegedly nonexistent internet connection that has now been exposed by the CrowdStrike failure – or maybe it wasn’t a failure but a proof-of-concept test.
Many counties, like those in Arizona, rely entirely on electronic systems to check in voters, make sure they are eligible to vote, and print their ballots, and that no longer keep on hand printed voter rolls or pre-printed ballots. Both counties use a “vote center” model where voters can vote anywhere, which requires the use of this technology.
How did Pima County implement the CrowdStrike fix? The county was able to connect remotely to the equipment at the polling places to fix the issue, so it turns out that, despite public denials, these devices are indeed connected to the internet and are capable of being knocked out or manipulated by potentially hostile software, such as CrowdStrike.
It may be too late to change course and implement hand counted paper ballots for the 2024 presidential election, but Republicans and the Trump campaign must be prepared for all kinds of machine-based failures and interference in the November 5, 2024, election. Are they ready?
2024 Election
Donald Trump
Joe Biden campaign
Crowdstrike
Internet Security
Internet Outage
Microsoft based computer systems
disruptions
worldwide computer system collapse
Election security
Dominion Voting Systems
Phishing attacks
Maricopa County Arizona
2020 Election Arizona
Pima County Arizona
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