What You Need to Know About the Salt Typhoon Hack
It’s being described as “the worst telecom hack in our nation’s history.” Hackers, reportedly sponsored by the Chinese government, are still within the networks of major telecom companies. Eight telecom companies were hacked including Verizon, AT&T, & T-Mobile. It’s “impossible to predict” when the hackers might be evicted from the phone networks. “The 2024 Salt Typhoon hack is believed to have actually been ongoing for one or two years, and remains active even now.”
The Hack Targeted Top Dem & Rep Campaign Officials
“Political targets, which reportedly included Donald Trump, Senator J.D. Vance, and people from within both Trump and Kamala Harris' presidential campaigns.”
“Upon identifying them, the hackers focused on accessing these individuals' communications, reading texts and listening in to audio calls. As of November, approximately 150 individual targets had been identified and notified, most of them within the Washington, D.C. area.”
The FCC has also proposed a new annual certification requirement for telecommunications companies, including certified compliance with new cybersecurity risk management plans.
Why has such a requirement never been passed for voting machines, whose record on security is notoriously abysmal?
What Can You Do
The FBI recommends using an encrypted phone texting /calling app for your calls and texts. We recommend Signal over WhatsApp. Whatsapp is part of Meta and there are privacy concerns around using it.
Why Would Chinese Hackers Want to Be Inside Campaigns?
Well, possibly they’re just being polite and wanted to make sure that during summits they could prepare the favorite dishes of whoever won the 2024 presidential election. But beyond good manners …
If you wanted to hack an election, you’d want to make sure it seemed demographically plausible. So, it would help to know the ground campaign of both campaigns. That way you could boost one campaign in areas where they had a strong ground game, and decrease votes in areas where it could be rationalized that the other team was weak.
Did the Chinese Prefer Trump to Harris?
“China is well aware of Trump’s fickle, unprincipled, and extreme personality, but fundamentally Trump’s “America First” and “Make America Great Again” slogans mean that he ‘wants America to shrink and reduce its global responsibilities. And that will be good for China’s strategic interests in Asia and in the Asia-Pacific.’”
Could Chinese Hackers Change U.S. Election Results?
Could an entire team of top level Chinese hackers who utterly penetrated eight major U.S. telecom companies, gained access to massive amounts of user metadata, accessed texts, and listened unimpeded to the phone calls of Trump, JD Vance and Harris/Walz staff — as they maintained control of the system undetected for up to two years — could that team of state sponsored hackers with virtually unlimited resources hack voting machines that have been demonstrated to be easily compromised by entry-level hackers? I have an opinion. What do you think?
$5,000 Matching Funds Grant Expires Friday 12/6 Midnight
We have a $5,000 matching grant in play right now.!We will receive a $5,000 donation, if we can raise $5,000 by tonight, Friday 12/6 at midnight. Please won’t you help us meet this goal? We’ve raised $3,475 so far. Our work to research and investigate the 2024 election results will cost much more. Your donation is tax-deductible. Thanks so much!
When is More Drop-off Analysis of the 2024 Election Coming?
Soon. We’re working to get our drop-off analysis public. We just want to make sure that everything is accurate, so we’re checking it on multiple fronts.
Drop-off is what we are calling the difference between the votes for president and the votes for Senate, or other down-ballot races, for both the Democrat and Republican parties. There is a large drop-off on the Republican side. Much larger than the Democratic side. Meaning more voters voted for Trump for president, but then didn’t vote for the Republican candidate for Senate or Attorney General. We’re working on bringing you exact percentages and total number of votes involved in about 15 states.
Yesterday we showed the data analysis to renowned security expert and white hat hacker Carsten Schurmann. He was pretty tight lipped, but said, he’s “looking at it and he's interested in looking at if further.”
This is great video that I produced from the hacker conference DEF CON featuring Carsten hacking a US voting machine. It took him less than an hour. He did it remotely. The video got 1.7 million views.
In the meantime the Pennsylvania drop-off analysis and explanation are on the SMARTelections.us website and were also discussed in this TikTok. The North Carolina analysis was discussed on this TikTok.
North Carolina & Pennsylvania
Volunteers we work with filed protests to challenge the election results in five North Carolina counties and we’re following up there. We are researching whether any window remains in Pennsylvania to move forward with recount requests by individual voters.
Lawsuit filed in Rockland County New York
The drop-off numbers in New York are extreme, and one county in particular, Rockland County, has a drop-off rate of 23% on the Republican side and -9% on the Democratic side. That’s more than a 30% difference.
Additionally we collaborated on poll watching with Diane Sare, an independent candidate for Senate in New York who is from Rockland County. She has now collected affidavits showing more voters voting for her in Rockland County than the official reported total in at least two districts. She is continuing to collect those affidavits.
Yesterday, our sister organization SMART Legislation filed a joint law suit with Sare asking for a full hand recount of the Senate and Presidential election and a new court-supervised election in Rockland County. If you want to help in Rockland County, NY, please sign up via this Google Form and say you want to help in Rockland County.
Think for yourself, or others will think for you without thinking of you.
~ Henry David Thoreau
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Excellent recap. Thanks!
I'm switching over to Signal and setting "disappearing messages" to 3 days.
Only using Signal with people I know and trust.