Published 12:13 IST, December 7th 2020
US on alert after link surfaces between Nevada govt website, ISI-linked company
The United States and Nevada government have been put on alert by an Anti-Voter Fraud group after a suspicious link was found between state government site.
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The United States and Nevada government have been put on alert by an Anti-Voter Fraud group after a suspicious link was found between the state government website and a company allegedly linked to Pakistani intelligence services. According to a report published in Breitbart News, the anti-voter fraud group called ‘True The Vote’ and requested a Nevada Voter Registration list from the Secretary of State’s website. However, upon receiving the list, they found that the email had been carbon copied to an employee from Lahore Based firm Kavtech.
“The organization, True the Vote, alerted state and federal authorities after it requested a Nevada voter registration list through the Nevada secretary of state's website, and received an email back with a downloadable voter file. That email arrived with an employee of Pakistani company Kavtech carbon copied," an article by Kristina Wong titled ‘Anti Voter Fraud Group Finds Suspicious Link Between Nevada State Website and Intelligence Linked Pakistani Company’ asserted.
The dubious email was CCed to waqas@kavtech.net. Upon further research, it was found that Waqas Butt was the CEO of Kavtach Solutions Ltd., a firm based in Lahore in Punjab, Pakistan. What was even more stunning was the fact that the company had links to ISI, military and the interior.
It was then that Catherine Engelbrecht, the president of the group informed John C. Demers, Assistant Attorney General for National Security in a letter, obtained exclusively by Breitbart News. “I was shocked to see the inclusion of another email address in the CC line,” she said in the letter.
'Either an accident or breach'
Meanwhile, the election researchers familiar with the incident revealed that inclusion of a foreign e-mail in the CC line could either be “an accident by a contractor who worked on the Nevada secretary of state’s website” or worse “an indication of the involvement of an unauthorized company allegedly linked to Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI) into the backend of the Nevada government’s website system”.
“The fact that this company was cc’ed on an email containing access to the Nevada voter registration database appears to be evidence of a breach within the Nevada Secretary of State’s email system. Obviously, the problems that such a breach may evidence include access to at least the voter registration information of Nevada residents. At worst it could reveal a breach that gives foreign power access to not only the State of Nevada’s systems but also to the email systems of anyone whom the State communicates with via email,” Engelbrecht had said in the letter.
Touting the possibility of a phishing attack, Kristina Wong in her article wrote that such intrusion could be “problematic” and could serve as a platform for hackers to gain entry into the servers of those requesting the lists. In addendum, she also warned that hackers might already have had access to state government email communications.
(With inputs from ANI)
12:13 IST, December 7th 2020