Post conflates pipeline hack and election fraud claims
5 min read
The claim: Colonial Pipeline hack proves election infrastructure could have been hacked
Communities along the East Coast proceed to encounter gasoline shortages just after the Colonial Pipeline Co. fell sufferer to a cybersecurity attack.
Social media people are utilizing the breach to resurrect unfounded statements about election fraud.
“If you can hack a pipeline, you can hack a voting device,” statements a May well 10 write-up.
Other accounts posted memes with the identical assert. Examples of those people posts are seen below and right here.
Reality check:NRA claim overstates Biden’s remarks on gun regulate
These posts attract a misleading comparison amongst the Colonial Pipeline hack and unfounded allegations about hacked voting techniques in the November 2020 election. Investigations all over election infrastructure have consistently found no proof of these interference in November.
United states of america Right now attained out to the posters for remark.
Colonial Pipeline IT was hacked
When Colonial Pipeline declared it experienced been hacked on May 7, the company said a ransomware attack influenced its details technological innovation methods.
Ransomware attacks are cybercrimes that usually entail hackers encrypting essential data, building it inaccessible until the goal pays a high ransom in digital currency. These cyberattacks usually target companies, but various hospitals have been victimized by ransomware attacks about the past 12 months as effectively.
“In response to the cybersecurity assault on our system, we proactively took selected devices offline to comprise the danger, which quickly halted all pipeline functions, and afflicted some of our IT methods,” the organization wrote in a Might 10 statement. “To restore assistance, we need to work to make certain that just about every of these methods can be brought back on-line properly.”
An FBI investigation identified software from the cybercrime team DarkSide, which has been under investigation considering the fact that October, was responsible for the assault. DarkSide typically develops and sells ransomware software program that other criminals use to carry out assaults, CNBC documented.
Kevin Feeney, a spokesperson for Colonial Pipeline, said the firm had “best-practices” prior to the attack, “such as protecting stringent segmentation in between our (informational technological innovation) and (operational technological innovation) environments, as perfectly as our policies that have for a long time blocked connection among (operational technology) and the net.”
Reality examine:Fake QAnon-connected conspiracy theory promises Arizona ballots are secretly watermarked
Several organization statements have specific Colonial’s efforts to manually work some lateral pipelines through the outage.
Elections stability expert dismisses the comparison
Posts connecting the pipeline hack to voting machines build on the popular — and baseless — statements of fraud from the 2020 election.
An specialist from the nonprofit Center for Democracy & Technologies told USA Today this connection is deceptive.
“The Colonial Pipeline assault does not, in any way, reveal that U.S. voting methods are susceptible on a huge scale, ” wrote Will Adler, senior technologist for elections and democracy at CDT.
Adler described several security measures election officers acquire to avoid hacking and emphasized that “dozens of audits, recounts and investigations across the nation” discovered no evidence elections benefits had been impacted by a cyberattack.
“Election officials do a terrific occupation of insulating voting methods from the internet,” he wrote. “Also, elections are extremely decentralized, with thousands of jurisdictions controlling elections throughout the nation. All of that signifies that there is no simple central point of attack that would enable a probable cyber attacker to disrupt an election or manipulate results.”
To prevent ransomware hacks like the a single Colonial Pipeline encounters, Adler reported election officials choose several precautions, including backing up sensitive data like voter registration databases.
Allegations of an election infrastructure hack are baseless
The election fraud claims are not only not similar to the pipeline hack, they’re simply just mistaken.
Conspiracy theories claim voting infrastructure was been hacked to fraudulently make sure President Joe Biden’s victory, but gurus located no evidence of these alleged hacks.
In November, a countrywide coalition designed up of the Department of Homeland Security’s Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Stability Company and the Nationwide Association of Condition Election Directors reported the 2020 election was “the most protected in American history.”
“There is no proof that any voting system deleted or lost votes, adjusted votes, or was in any way compromised,” the coalition introduced.
Reality verify:Census voting data isn’t really proof of fraud in 2020 election
Dominion Voting Systems, the election technology company at the center of most of these promises, has repeatedly held the fraud claims are fake.
Over the last couple of months, Dominion submitted several multibillion-dollar defamation lawsuits towards people today shut to previous President Donald Trump and ideal-wing media corporations that promoted these fake statements. The defendants consist of Rudy Giuliani, Sydney Powell, Mike Lindell and Fox Information.
Our rating: Lacking context
We rate the claim the Colonial Pipeline hack proves that election infrastructure could have been hacked Lacking CONTEXT simply because the post is misleading. The ransomware attack on Colonial Pipeline is unrelated to promises that voting equipment were being hacked. According to an professional, decentralized election infrastructure and election procedures safeguard elections from identical attacks. Allegations that voting infrastructure employed in the 2020 election was hacked have no foundation in reality.
Our point-check resources:
- Usa Now, Could 8, Significant fuel pipeline halts operations soon after cyber assault. Will temporary outage induce fuel shortage, selling price hikes?
- The Colonial Pipeline, accessed April 12, Media Statement Update: Colonial Pipeline Technique Disruption
- Usa Today, Oct. 28, 2020, FBI warns ransomware assault threatens US health care procedure: At the very least 5 hospitals have been strike this week
- United states Nowadays, Might 11, What you want to know about the Colonial Pipeline cyberattack, gas costs, shortages
- CNBC, May perhaps 10, Here’s the hacking team accountable for the Colonial Pipeline shutdown
- United states Today, Could 11, Colonial Pipeline hunting to ‘substantially’ restore operations by close of 7 days
- Emailed statement from Kevin Feeney, Could 12,
- United states of america Currently, Nov. 17, 2020, Point examine: What is genuine about the 2020 election, vote counting, Electoral Higher education
- Usa Nowadays, Nov. 14, 2020, Simple fact verify: Dominion voting devices didn’t delete votes from Trump, swap them to Biden
- United states of america Nowadays, Jan. 25, Dominion Voting Programs sues Rudy Giuliani for $1.3B alleging defamation for election feedback
- Usa Today, Jan. 8, Dominion Voting Techniques data files $1.3B defamation go well with towards ex-Trump law firm Sidney Powell
- United states Now, Feb. 22, Dominion Voting Programs sues MyPillow CEO Mike Lindell
- United states of america Currently, March 26, Dominion Voting sues Fox for $1.6 billion above wrong 2020 election fraud claims
- May perhaps 13, email with Will Adler, Centre for Democracy & Technological know-how, Senior Technologist, Elections & Democracy
Thank you for supporting our journalism. You can subscribe to our print edition, ad-totally free app or digital newspaper duplicate here.
Our point look at work is supported in part by a grant from Fb.
