Expert: DHS Was Aware of Vulnerabilities in Voting Systems

NTD Newsroom
By NTD Newsroom
December 1, 2020NTD News Today
share

Phil Waldron, a cybersecurity expert and retired Army Colonel who specialized in information warfare, testified at the Arizona public hearing before GOP legislators.

Waldron said he shared his team’s extensive research into U.S. voting systems’ vulnerabilities with local Texas DHS personnel months before the election. Some of the vulnerabilities include the machines being connected to the internet and malware.

“When I started working on this project in August, I called them up, said: ‘You guys have gotta come out and look at it’. They did. They spent an initial 3 hours going through this data. At the end of that, one of them said ‘I think I need to go outside and throw up.’” said Waldron.

He said that DHS personnel also had multiple follow-ups, and received over 600 gigabytes of data that had been accumulated over time.

“Our team provided over 200 gigabytes of confirmatory data, and they analyzed that. After they analyzed, there was a scan, a passive scan done. They conducted a limited scan and determined that there were vulnerabilities. They held numerous meetings with their folks, the cyber, the CISA cyber side and INA which is the intelligence assessment division,” said Waldron.

He also claimed he was told by local DHS personnel that members of CISA’s elections division would not participate in the internal meetings or briefings about the material his team provided.

One of the GOP legislators noted that Chris Krebs, the former director of CISA, stated that the 2020 election was the most secure in history.

“He stated ‘we’re not connected to the internet,’ he stated ‘no votes leave this county,’ this is all things he’s stated publicly. So are you willing to say under oath that you have seen the connection to the internet? You have seen it go offshore, to Germany, Frankfurt? Are these things that you have personally seen and can say, that is not true?”

Waldron replied in the affirmative, saying his team’s “whitehat hackers” had found and documented these vulnerabilities.

GOP Legislator: “So why would he make that kind of comment?”

“Either not knowing, believing the myth, or not wanting the truth to be known,” said Waldron.

When Krebs was director of CISA, the agency, along with other members of the Election Infrastructure Government Coordinating Council, released a joint statement declaring the election as “the most secure in American history.”

CISA stated: “There is no evidence that any voting system deleted or lost votes, changed votes, or was in any way compromised.”

The agency failed to mention that Dominion, as well as Smartmatic, are members of the council. Krebs was fired by President Trump earlier this month after the statement was released.

 

ntd newsletter icon
Sign up for NTD Daily
What you need to know, summarized in one email.
Stay informed with accurate news you can trust.
By registering for the newsletter, you agree to the Privacy Policy.
Comments