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PaperclipPerfector  24d ago (text post)   34277 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of October 28, 2024

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A few off the top of my head:

Power substation attacks on Election Day, killing power to polling stations in a major metro for an extended period, say a few days.

A flood of mail-in ballots using the names of registered voters and info gleaned from credit agency data leaks, not necessarily with the intention of having them counted but to overwhelm the various crosscheck and verification systems. Bonus if lots of voters get to the polls on election day only to learn a ballot has already been submitted in their name.

Theft of a significant proportion of a large jurisdiction's paper ballot supply. Again, bonus if not discovered until late. Alternatively, a supply chain attack causing a significant fraction of ballots mixed into the overall supply to be slightly misprinted, requiring checking each blank manually to ensure it is correct.

Radio/cellular signal jammers covering polling places: as I understand it, the vast majority of machines use some type of communications signal to report results at the very least.

Exposure of a poorly concealed scheme to outright buy votes for cash (false flag, of course).

I'm gonna suggest that it's probably not a great idea to come up with long and seriously-considered lists of ways to upset civil society, especially those that could be planned and executed in less than a week.

Probably not for an individual to publicize them. But isn't this the perennial question in security vulnerability reporting? An organization says they have perfectly secure systems; an investigator thinks of a dozen ways they're not secure and reports it; organization responds in a way that the reporter doesn't think is serious and so makes them public.

An hour after I wrote this, /u/SomethingMusic linked to reports of what appears to be Bad Idea #2 in action.

I think most of these would be tough to pull off in a week though, with the possible exception of jammers.

(Hi feds! I'm a good guy, promise.)

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