ICYMI - Did Russian hackers elect the U.S. president? Dont believe the hype. [View all]

[yallerdawg]

Washington Post, Ryan C. Maness and Brandon Valeriano

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Two material facts have combined to create this latest cyber hysteria. First, we know that just over half of voters were disappointed at the results of the Nov. 8 election. Second, Russia hacked personal and campaign emails over the summer, along with voter rolls in some states, apparently to erode confidence in the American electoral system.

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Suggestions that Russia hacked the U.S. presidential election are unhelpful, as Russian capabilities do not extend that far. Hacking voting precincts would take physical manipulation of machines. Hackers would have to open and physically reprogram each voting machine in each targeted precinct, or swap in malware-infested voting cards to replace the original ones. This would take a legion of Russian spies betting on not getting caught — not a risk that a calculating Russian President Vladimir Putin would be likely to take.

We do know that the U.S. government warned the Kremlin before the election and made it clear that any meddling would be met with retaliation. Russia apparently stopped its email-hacking activities before the election. Some analysts argued that this move reflected a realization in Moscow that the election of Trump might not be at all helpful to Putin’s international ambitions. It’s also likely that U.S. actions, such as closing off WikiLeaks’ Internet access, were proportional responses that demonstrated U.S. resolve.

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Research by an Israeli team led by Michael Gross suggests that people’s fears of cyberterrorism are not significantly different from their fears about conventional terrorism. In fact, the threat of cyber violations provokes a biological reaction, as measured by increased stress. This suggests that the impact of cyber violations weighs more heavily in people’s minds and bodies than in reality.

That an election theoretically could be hacked does not mean that it was. The hypothetical possibilities inherent in digital attacks often far outweigh the actual extent of digital aggression.

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Read it all at: https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/monkey-cage/wp/2016/11/24/did-russian-hackers-elect-the-u-s-president-dont-believe-the-hype/?utm_term=.ecbb79dacef2