By
M.
Richard Maxson
The
state of Georgia has revealed that the Department of Homeland
Security has attempted to hack their election system 10 different
times since February 2nd of this year. In
an exclusive interview, a visibly frustrated Secretary of State Brian
Kemp confirmed the attacks of different levels on his agency’s
network over the last 10 months. He says they all traced back to DHS
internet provider addresses.
Georgia
first revealed on December 8th the state discovered an attempt to
hack it’s election system that originated from an IP address that
was tracked to the United States Department of Homeland Security. Before
leaving office the Obama administration confirmed the attacks
originated at the DHS but has refused to provide a straight story on
why the attempted hackings occurred.
Georgia’s
Secretary of State has now confirmed that its
election systems were the subject of cyberattacks on 10 separate
occasions with each attack originating from a Department of Homeland
Security IP address. With each attack
occurring around critical registration and voting deadlines, Kemp
said. Attacks
of different levels
occurred on his agency's network over the last 10 months. They all
traced back to DHS internet provider addresses.
The
first one happened on Feb. 2, 2016, the day after Georgia’s voter
registration deadline. The next one took place just days before the
SEC primary. Another occurred in May, the
day before the general primary, and then two more took place in
November, the day before and the day
of the presidential election.
Why
someone with a DHS IP address (216.81.81.80) had attempted to hack
into his state’s election database on November 15, 2016 at 8:43AM?
Furious with the lack of answers,
he got from DHS Secretary Jeb Johnson, Georgia’s
Secretary of State Brian Kemp fired off a letter to loop in President
Donald Trump asking for a
formal review. “We just need to ask the new administration
to take a look at this and make sure that we get the truth.
As
a reminder NSA whistleblower Edward Snowden warned the public that
the NSA controls servers all over the world and they can easily frame
China or Russia for such attacks. The government’s secret
anti-forensic program, Marble Framework, allows them to direct blame
for the alleged hacks onto another party by hiding fragments of texts
that would allow the author of the malware to be identified. Perhaps
more alarmingly, they can also “add foreign languages” to
malware, meaning that the agency can effectively divert attention to
other countries. The program lists Chinese, Russian, Korean, Arabic,
and Farsi. So, if malware and hacks are indeed domestic, they could
easily be made to look as though they originated from another
country. Given the National Security Agency is under the Department
of Homeland Security their claims to attribute the so-called Russia
hack attempts to Russian IP addresses are now suspect.
After
investigating the matter the Department of Homeland Security
announced the attempt to infiltrate the Georgia’s election was a
one-off committed by a rogue agent. But
Georgia’s Secretary of State says the DHS’ story about its source
keeps changing. “First it was an employee in Corpus Christi, and
now it’s a contractor in Georgia,” Kemp said.
He
stated that several of those scans came around the same time he
testified before Congress about his opposition to a federal plan to
classify election systems as “critical infrastructure,” like
power plants and financial systems. *Note: the so-called cyberattacks on Connecticut's power grid, originally tied to Russia, were also proven false.
As
we’ve said before, despite all the media attention on
“Russian hackers,” this cyberattack, originated from
within our own Department of Homeland Security, is the only actual
confirmed case of hacking related to the 2016 election.
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