US on alert after link between Nevada govt website and ISI-linked company surfaces

The United States and the 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 Lahore-based company allegedly linked to the Pakistani intelligence services.

According to an article by Kristina Wong titled 'Anti-Voter Fraud Group Finds Suspicious Link Between Nevada State Website and Intelligence-Linked Pakistani Company' published in Breitbart News on December 5, "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."

Catherine Engelbrecht, 'True the Vote' President, informed John C. Demers, Assistant Attorney General for National Security in a letter, obtained exclusively by Breitbart News, that upon receiving the email, "I was shocked to see the inclusion of another email address in the CC line."

"The address was waqas@kavtech.net. Waqas Butt is the CEO of Kavtech Solutions Ltd.. Kavtech is a Pakistani owned company, located in Lahore, Punjab, Pakistan, with ties to Pakistani intelligence, military, and the interior," she said in the letter.

Meanwhile, the election researchers familiar with the incident has opined that the inclusion of another email address in the CC line could either be an "an accident by a contractor who worked on the Nevada secretary of state's website" or even an indication of the involvement of an unauthorised company allegedly linked to Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI) into the backend of the Nevada government's website system.

"Such an intrusion could be problematic if downloading the voter registration list also worked as a phishing attack, where hackers could gain entry into the servers of those requesting the lists, or if hackers had access to state government email communications," Kristina said.

"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," Engelbrecht told Demers.

"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 a 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," she added.

Post the incident, Engelbrecht said in an interview with Breitbart News, "Why would they [Pakistani company] be getting this information? Why would they show up on a cc line? There's no good way to look at that should make anyone feel confident in the security of this process."

"Further, all we can speak to is our experience. Who knows where else that is showing up and what else they're tracking? If it's embedded in a form like that, they could be doing that for any number of things," she further said.

"The implication here that a foreign national company with known ties to the intelligence community in Pakistan -- there's no way to overlook that. It's inexplicable and it should be investigated," she added.

This incident comes even after a Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA) executive committee on November 12 had said in a statement, "While we know there are many unfounded claims and opportunities for misinformation about the process of our elections, we can assure you we have the utmost confidence in the security and integrity of our elections, and you should too."

Meanwhile, despite sending requests for comment to the Arizona secretary of state and the Justice Department regarding the matter, Breitbart News is not received any comments.

(ANI)

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