ZScaler

I have a question for you tech guys. In your opinion if the United States voting machines utilized Zscaler would they be secure/more secured from being hacked?

Kindest Regards,
Steve

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Steve,

This is a fiction. Our voting machines cannot be hacked because they are not connected to the internet!

I am not going to get into politics here. As an answer to your stock question, the answer is no. Because the voting machines are not on the internet except for a very limited amount of polls that allow internet voting.

Obama said it, that it is ridiculous that anyone can hack out polls in late 2016 and that remains true today because of the reason that our voting machines are not on the internet and they are not linked together. Thus no business for Zs.

Tinker

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I have a family member who was an elections commissioner for about 20 years. I said it would be simpler to have one kind of voting/machine across the country, there is very little comonality. He said that is quite deliberate, that way elections cannot be stolen. When I thought about it it made a lot of sense to me. Paper ballots, punch cards, lever tally machines, in the military I lived a lot of places and they had different systems, it is comforting to know that there are lots of different systems.

Flygal

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Our voting machines cannot be hacked because they are not connected to the internet!

Then why was it discovered that one manufacturer had installed pcAnywhere on its machines?
https://motherboard.vice.com/en_us/article/mb4ezy/top-voting…

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ZScaler website has a blog addressing “hacking”:

https://www.zscaler.com/blogs/corporate/hackers-are-coming-w…

Hackers are coming - This week in cybersecurity
1.After China’s crackdown, now Russia is banning VPNs too

2.Hackers Break Into HBO’s Networks

3.DEFCON hackers find it’s very easy to break voting machines

4.Two U.S. lawmakers think the government has a new cybersecurity problem: The Internet of Things

Continued…

Dominic
long ZS and can see these guys being very…very…profitable

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This is a fiction. Our voting machines cannot be hacked because they are not connected to the internet!

If an 11-year-old girl can change the results from a voting machine in 10 minutes via physical access, the connectivity to the interwebs seems to be a non-requirement. Just as one recent example: https://www.usatoday.com/story/tech/nation-now/2018/08/13/11…

Granted, there was a much larger set of machines at DEFCON this year than last and making that environment available was purposeful. But I do think the trust element does not go away, connected or not, as a compromised election official could do the same thing before or after the votes are taken.

(Without getting political, there are probably bigger concerns than this, such as who should be allowed to vote in a given election and how to prove they are who they say they are, but that’s for a different board.)

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Either way, Zscaler is of no use for securing elections. It is a human issue, not a technological issue as the balloting methods are purposefully kept unconnected and low tech to severely limit any such tampering.

This said, yeah, vote fraud happens all the time, but is usually limited and only matters in the closest of elections. It is not a computer or internet issue.

Btw/ I wish it were, but Zs cannot solve all problems for everyone, albeit they do solve a heck of a lot of problems for a heck of a lot of people. Hopefully they will be allowed to modernize the Federal government as well.

Tinker

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It is a human issue, not a technological issue as the balloting methods are purposefully kept unconnected and low tech to severely limit any such tampering.

One of the issues of concern is that hackers will access the voter registry and either delete individuals or alter information in their records such that when voters go to the polls they are prevented from casting a regular ballot because their information does not match records.

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One of the issues of concern is that hackers will access the voter registry and either delete individuals or alter information in their records such that when voters go to the polls they are prevented from casting a regular ballot because their information does not match records.

Why, whatever could you possibly mean?

Interstate Voter Registration Crosscheck Program

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Interstate_Voter_Registratio…

Interstate Voter Registration Crosscheck (commonly referred to as IVRC or Crosscheck) is database software system designed to compare voter records from other states and identify voters registered in two or more states. Crosscheck was developed in 2005 by Kansas and the Secretary of State of Kansas Ron Thornburgh, which was in conjunction with Iowa, Missouri, and Nebraska to compare voter registration data and identify any Americans who may have voted twice in recent elections.[2] Crosscheck has been strongly criticized by critics such as Greg Palast, Indiana State Conference of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People, and the League of Women Voters of Indiana, for racially motivated voter caging of non-white registered voters in the United States in NAACP and the League of Women Voters.[3]

I think the idea that voting booths can’t be tampered with is a fiction. As some states even make it legal and justified. Not even remotely accurate either.

Dominic
Long ZS

We’ve got 9 posts on this thread and long ago decided that Zscaler is of no use in avoiding hacked machines nationwide. We are drifting off into lightly veiled political discussions.

LETS CLOSE THIS THREAD. THANKS FOR YOUR COOPERATION.

SAUL

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