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The Cybersecurity 202: In this Colorado county, election conspiracies led to a real-world leak | The Washington Post

Election conspiracy theories are threatening to cause real-world cyber vulnerabilities.

Exhibit A: the county clerk of Mesa County, Colo. allegedly leaked images of Dominion-brand voting machine hard drives and passwords online.

The stranger-than-fiction story began when some sensitive election information from Mesa County appeared on a website aligned with the QAnon conspiracy theory. Other information appeared at a conspiracy-theory-heavy cyber symposium hosted by MyPillow CEO Mike Lindell, where Mesa County Clerk Tina Peters (R) joined Lindell onstage.

Now Peters is in hiding and being investigated by the FBI and the Colorado secretary of state’s office for allegedly surreptitiously gathering the information and sharing it with Lindell and others. The secretary of state’s office claims that before the information was released, Peters turned off video surveillance and brought an unauthorized person into the secure room where the election equipment is stored.

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Source: The Cybersecurity 202: In this Colorado county, election conspiracies led to a real-world leak | The Washington Post