#it security software testing certification

She Won

The missing votes uncovered in Smart Elections’ legal case in Rockland County, New York, are just the tip of the iceberg—an iceberg that extends across the swing states and into Texas.

On Monday, an investigator’s story finally hit the news cycle: Pro V&V, one of only two federally accredited testing labs, approved sweeping last-minute updates to ES&S voting machines in the months leading up to the 2024 election—without independent testing, public disclosure, or full certification review.

These changes were labeled “de minimis”—a term meant for trivial tweaks. But they touched ballot scanners, altered reporting software, and modified audit files—yet were all rubber-stamped with no oversight.

That revelation is a shock to the public.

But for those who’ve been digging into the bizarre election data since November, this isn’t the headline—it’s the final piece to the puzzle. While Pro V&V was quietly updating equipment in plain sight, a parallel operation was unfolding behind the curtain—between tech giants and Donald Trump.

And it started with a long forgotten sale.

A Power Cord Becomes a Backdoor

In March 2021, Leonard Leo—the judicial kingmaker behind the modern conservative legal machine—sold a quiet Chicago company by the name of Tripp Lite for $1.65 billion. The buyer: Eaton Corporation, a global power infrastructure conglomerate that just happened to have a partnership with Peter Thiel’s Palantir.

To most, Tripp Lite was just a hardware brand—battery backups, surge protectors, power strips. But in America’s elections, Tripp Lite devices were something else entirely.

They are physically connected to ES&S central tabulators and Electionware servers, and Dominion tabulators and central servers across the country. And they aren’t dumb devices. They are smart UPS units—programmable, updatable, and capable of communicating directly with the election system via USB, serial port, or Ethernet.

ES&S systems, including central tabulators and Electionware servers, rely on Tripp Lite UPS devices. ES&S’s Electionware suite runs on Windows OS, which automatically trusts connected UPS hardware.

If Eaton pushed an update to those UPS units, it could have gained root-level access to the host tabulation environment—without ever modifying certified election software.

In Dominion’s Democracy Suite 5.17, the drivers for these UPS units are listed as “optional”—meaning they can be updated remotely without triggering certification requirements or oversight. Optional means unregulated. Unregulated means invisible. And invisible means perfect for infiltration.

Enter the ballot scrubbing platform BallotProof. Co-created by Ethan Shaotran, a longtime employee of Elon Musk and current DOGE employee, BallotProof was pitched as a transparency solution—an app to “verify” scanned ballot images and support election integrity.

With Palantir's AI controlling the backend, and BallotProof cleaning the front, only one thing was missing: the signal to go live.

September 2024: Eaton and Musk Make It Official

Then came the final public breadcrumb:In September 2024, Eaton formally partnered with Elon Musk.

The stated purpose? A vague, forward-looking collaboration focused on “grid resilience” and “next-generation communications.”

But buried in the partnership documents was this line:

“Exploring integration with Starlink's emerging low-orbit DTC infrastructure for secure operational continuity.”

The Activation: Starlink Goes Direct-to-Cell

That signal came on October 30, 2024—just days before the election, Musk activated 265 brand new low Earth orbit (LEO) V2 Mini satellites, each equipped with Direct-to-Cell (DTC) technology capable of processing, routing, and manipulating real-time data, including voting data, through his satellite network.

DTC doesn’t require routers, towers, or a traditional SIM. It connects directly from satellite to any compatible device—including embedded modems in “air-gapped” voting systems, smart UPS units, or unsecured auxiliary hardware.

From that moment on:

Commands could be sent from orbit

Patch delivery became invisible to domestic monitors

Compromised devices could be triggered remotely

This groundbreaking project that should have taken two-plus years to build, was completed in just under ten months.

Elon Musk boasts endlessly about everything he’s launching, building, buying—or even just thinking about—whether it’s real or not. But he pulls off one of the largest and fastest technological feats in modern day history… and says nothing? One might think that was kind of… “weird.”

According to New York Times reporting, on October 5—just before Starlink’s DTC activation—Musk texted a confidant:

“I’m feeling more optimistic after tonight. Tomorrow we unleash the anomaly in the matrix.”

Then, an hour later:

“This isn’t something on the chessboard, so they’ll be quite surprised. ‘Lasers’ from space.”

It read like a riddle. In hindsight, it was a blueprint.

The Outcome

Data that makes no statistical sense. A clean sweep in all seven swing states.

The fall of the Blue Wall. Eighty-eight counties flipped red—not one flipped blue.

Every victory landed just under the threshold that would trigger an automatic recount. Donald Trump outperformed expectations in down-ballot races with margins never before seen—while Kamala Harris simultaneously underperformed in those exact same areas.

If one were to accept these results at face value—Donald Trump, a 34-count convicted felon, supposedly outperformed Ronald Reagan. According to the co-founder of the Election Truth Alliance:

“These anomalies didn’t happen nationwide. They didn’t even happen across all voting methods—this just doesn’t reflect human voting behavior.”

They were concentrated.

Targeted.

Specific to swing states and Texas—and specific to Election Day voting.

And the supposed explanation? “Her policies were unpopular.” Let’s think this through logically. We’re supposed to believe that in all the battleground states, Democratic voters were so disillusioned by Vice President Harris’s platform that they voted blue down ballot—but flipped to Trump at the top of the ticket?

Not in early voting.

Not by mail.

With exception to Nevada, only on Election Day.

And only after a certain threshold of ballots had been cast—where VP Harris’s numbers begin to diverge from her own party, and Trump’s suddenly begin to surge. As President Biden would say, “C’mon, man.”

In the world of election data analysis, there’s a term for that: vote-flipping algorithm.

And of course, Donald Trump himself:

He spent a year telling his followers he didn’t need their votes—at one point stating,

“…in four years, you don't have to vote again. We'll have it fixed so good, you're not gonna have to vote.”

____

They almost got away with the coup. The fact that they still occupy the White House and control most of the US government will make removing them and replacing them with the rightful President Harris a very difficult task.

The Shrinking Voting Industry

News of the acquisition apparently caught Dominion customers off guard last week. Leiendecker reportedly held a conference call on Friday with Colorado county election clerks who were angry that they’d learned of the sale from media reports instead of the company. The election clerks reportedly grilled Leiendecker about conspiracy claims about Dominion and his plans for the company. The company’s sparse new website currently has only a brief note from Leiendecker on the homepage announcing that the company is “100% American‐owned.”

Leiendecker’s acquisition of Dominion is not a big surprise, however. Knowink and Dominion have worked together closely for a while. Dominion has used Knowink as a subcontractor when bidding for election contracts in order to offer customers a turnkey election solution that includes voting machines and poll books. And Leiendecker’s acquisition continues a long history of consolidation in the voting industry.

For the past two decades, there have only been three primary makers of voting machines in the US, the identities of which have changed frequently through mergers and acquisitions. Currently, the top three are Election Systems & Software, Dominion (now Liberty Vote), and Hart InterCivic, in that order.

Dominion was founded in 2003 in Toronto and was not a big player in the US until 2010, when it acquired two other voting firms—Premier Election Solutions (formerly Diebold Election Systems) and Sequoia Voting Systems. Premier/Diebold, like Dominion, exited the elections business after being beleaguered by security problems with its systems and lingering mistrust over the company’s close ties to the Republican Party (the former CEO had been a fundraiser for President George W. Bush). Sequoia left in large part due to financial issues. In acquiring Dominion, Leiendecker also acquires any remaining remnants of Premier/Diebold and Sequoia—equipment, software, and people—that Dominion may still possess.

With the Dominion acquisition, Leiendecker gains control of election equipment in more than half of the states. Dominion equipment is used across 26 states plus Puerto Rico. Knowink electronic poll books, which replace traditional paper poll books used to verify the eligibility of voters when they sign in at precincts, are used in 29 states plus the District of Columbia. But there are jurisdictions across 14 states, covering 20 million registered voters, that use both Dominion and Knowink systems. This gives companies that Leiendecker controls ownership of equipment that covers the entire election process in those jurisdictions—from the verification of registered voters to the casting of ballots and tabulation of results. And Georgia uses Knowink and Dominion systems statewide. Knowink poll books even interact with Dominion voting machines since a voter smart card inserted into the poll books gets encoded and then inserted into voting machines to pull up a digital ballot for the voter.

Nonetheless, some might be confused about why Leiendecker would want to acquire Dominion, since the voting machine industry has never been particularly lucrative. A 2017 study estimated it to be a $300 million-a-year business, with Dominion’s annual revenue estimated at the time to be about $100 million. Unlike IT systems that get replaced every three to five years, election systems get replaced once in a decade or longer. Voting equipment vendors often rely on long-term maintenance and election-services contracts to stay solvent while vying for new equipment contracts.

It’s not clear how much Dominion is worth today. In 2018, Dominion’s management team partnered with Staple Street Capital, a private equity firm, to acquire a controlling stake in the company. Staple estimated the company’s value at $80 million at the time. A more recent report produced by an accounting firm hired by Dominion to support its claim for damages in Fox defamation lawsuit said the company would have been worth about $741 million in December 2020 if not for Fox’s false election-rigging claims.

The Liberty official who spoke with WIRED would not disclose the price Leiendecker paid or whether other parties contributed funds. He said only that Leiendecker “is the sole owner and he privately financed” the acquisition.

Rife With Speculation

On social media, users have expressed concern about Leiendecker’s close ties to the Republican Party as a possible reason for his interest in buying Dominion, raising questions about whether he sides with conspiracy theories about Dominion and the 2020 election. Recent settlements in Dominion lawsuits against conspiracy theorists raises further questions about this, as have Leiendecker’s connection to Trump ally Ed Martin. Leiendecker didn’t respond to questions about these concerns.

Following the 2020 election in which right-wing Trump supporters accused Dominion of having ties to Venezuela—apparently confusing the company with Smartmatic, a voting machine company founded by Venezuelan engineers—and rigging the election, Dominion filed defamation lawsuits against right-wing news outlets Fox News and One America News Network for $1.6 billion for amplifying the false claims. It also filed suit against MyPillow CEO Mike Lindell, and former Trump campaign lawyers Rudy Giuliani and Sidney Powell, for $1.3 billion each.

In 2023, Fox News settled its suit for $787.5 million, and Newsmax recently settled for $67 million. But last month, Dominion reached agreements with OAN, Powell, and Giuliani for undisclosed terms. These latest settlements were a condition of Leiendecker’s acquisition of Dominion. Dominion still has pending lawsuits against Lindell and former Overstock CEO Patrick Byrne. The Liberty official who spoke with WIRED says these will be ending soon as well. “All litigation has been resolved or is in the process of being resolved,” the official wrote in an email. But Stefanie Lambert, Byrne’s attorney, wrote in an email to WIRED: “There is no settlement. Dr. Byrne is looking forward to trial.” A lawyer for Lindell did not respond to an inquiry but Lindell told Infowars this week that he will never settle with Dominion.

The settlements raise questions about whether Leiendecker simply didn’t want to be saddled with lawsuits or if he was doing right-wing defendants a favor by forcing Dominion into settlements favorable to them. Leiendecker didn’t respond to a question about the undisclosed settlement terms.

While Leiendecker hasn't directly addressed the issue around conspiracy theorists and election manipulation publicly, his response to allegations of vote-rigging made more than a decade ago suggests he considers election integrity to be paramount, even when doing so might not be politically advantageous. Leiendecker was appointed by Missouri's Republican secretary of state to investigate St. Louis elections administration after problems arose in the 2000 election there, according to Axios. Leiendecker was then hired by Ed Martin to be the Republican director of the St. Louis City Board of Election Commissioners from 2005 until 2009

Martin, now a staunch Trump ally and supporter of his stolen-election claims, is currently the US pardon attorney and prior to this served under the current Trump administration as the interim US attorney for DC, where he demoted prosecutors who worked on January 6 insurrection cases. But in 2005, he was chair of the St. Louis City Election Board when he hired Leiendecker. Five years after hiring Leiendecker, Martin ran unsuccessfully as a GOP candidate for a congressional seat against the Democratic incumbent and was backed by the St. Louis Tea Party. Similar to what occurred following Trump’s 2020 presidential loss, Martin alleged there were irregularities in the vote counting. A Tea Party spokeswoman called the election “stolen,” and Martin refused to concede the election. Leiendecker, instead of supporting his former boss, disputed the stolen election claim at the time, saying there were "no shenanigans” and challenged the critics to prove otherwise. St. Louis Public Radio reported that he directed this challenge at Martin.

During his time as director of the St. Louis elections board, Leiendecker was widely credited by both political parties for improving the election board’s procedures and ensuring that it processed votes more efficiently than previous boards.

Paper Chase

When it comes to future elections, Leiendecker has said in Liberty’s press release and media statements that the company is committed to providing election technology that leverages “hand-marked paper ballots” in “compliance with President Trump's executive order.”

Trump, acting on his false vote-rigging claims, has called for all-paper elections, and his March executive order has called for all voting systems to use or produce a voter-verifiable paper ballot that voters can review to ensure machines didn’t alter their votes. Some media outlets have interpreted Leiendecker’s statements to mean he aligns with Trump’s stance to ban systems that don’t produce a paper record. The Liberty official who spoke with WIRED says Leiendecker meant only that Liberty will offer products that “enable compliance with federal and state standards”—whatever those standards may be. Current voting system standards advise states to use systems that produce a paper record but cannot require this; states decide on their own what voting systems they use. Similarly, Trump has no authority to decide what voting systems states use; the Constitution gives this authority to states alone, and the EO is currently being litigated in court.

Notably, Trump’s EO also wants states to stop using paper ballots that have bar codes or QR codes to record and tabulate votes, because the codes are not human-readable. These ballots are produced by so-called ballot-marking devices, or BMDs—voting systems that allow voters to make selections through a touchscreen tablet or other assistive device, which then prints a paper ballot showing the voter’s selections that the voter can read to verify that the machine marked their votes correctly. The ballot is then passed through an optical scanner to record and tabulate the results.

Many BMDs print ballots with a bar code or QR code on them that is encoded with the voter’s choices; it is this encoded portion that the scanner reads to record and tabulate the votes, not the human-readable portion of the ballot that the voter can verify. Ironically, like Trump, election-integrity activists (on the left and right) have long opposed the use of paper ballots with bar codes or QR codes for security reasons: Someone could theoretically program the systems to print a voter’s choices on the human-readable portion while encoding something else in the bar code or QR code that the scanner reads and tabulates. Dominion makes a BMD called the ImageCast X, most of which produce ballots with QR codes, which is used in all or parts of 15 states, according to Verified Voting, which tracks election equipment usage in the US. They are used statewide in Georgia, an important swing state that was the subject of much controversy in the 2020 election.

Insufficient testing capacity, drawn-out factory inspections and government scrutiny of sensitive source code were among key issues camera makers said had delayed approvals and risked disrupting unspecified infrastructure and commercial projects.

"Millions of dollars will be lost from the industry, sending tremors through the market," Ajay Dubey, Hanwha's director for South Asia, told India's IT ministry in an email on April 9.

The IT ministry and most of the companies identified by Reuters didn't respond to requests for comment about the discussions and the impact of the testing policy. The ministry told the executives on April 3 that it may consider accrediting more testing labs.

Millions of CCTV cameras have been installed across Indian cities, offices and residential complexes in recent years to enhance security monitoring. New Delhi has more than 250,000 cameras, according to official data, mostly mounted on poles in key locations.

The rapid take-up is set to bolster India's surveillance camera market to $7 billion by 2030, from $3.5 billion last year, Counterpoint Research analyst Varun Gupta told Reuters.

China's Hikvision and Dahua account for 30% of the market, while India's CP Plus has a 48% share, Gupta said, adding that some 80% of all CCTV components are from China.

Hanwha, Motorola Solutions and Britain's Norden Communication told officials by email in April that just a fraction of the industry's 6,000 camera models had approvals under the new rules.

CHINA CONCERN

The U.S. in 2022 banned sales of Hikvision and Dahua equipment, citing national security risks. Britain and Australia have also restricted China-made devices.

Likewise, with CCTV cameras, India "has to ensure there are checks on what is used in these devices, what chips are going in," the senior Indian official told Reuters. "China is part of the concern."

China's state security laws require organizations to cooperate with intelligence work.

Reuters reported this month that unexplained communications equipment had been found in some Chinese solar power inverters by U.S. experts who examined the products.

Since 2020, when Indian and Chinese forces clashed at their border, India has banned dozens of Chinese-owned apps, including TikTok, on national security grounds. India also tightened foreign investment rules for countries with which it shares a land border.

The remote detonation of pagers in Lebanon last year, which Reuters reported was executed by Israeli operatives targeting Hezbollah, further galvanized Indian concerns about the potential abuse of tech devices and the need to quickly enforce testing of CCTV equipment, the senior Indian official said.

The camera-testing rules don't contain a clause about land borders.

But last month, China's Xiaomi said that when it applied for testing of CCTV devices, Indian officials told the company the assessment couldn't proceed because "internal guidelines" required Xiaomi to supply more registration details of two of its China-based contract manufacturers.

"The testing lab indicated that this requirement applies to applications originating from countries that share a land border with India," the company wrote in an April 24 email to the Indian agency that oversees lab testing.

Xiaomi didn't respond to Reuters queries, and the IT ministry didn't address questions about the company's account.

China's foreign ministry told Reuters it opposes the "generalization of the concept of national security to smear and suppress Chinese companies," and hoped India would provide a non-discriminatory environment for Chinese firms.

LAB TESTING, FACTORY VISITS

While CCTV equipment supplied to India's government has had to undergo testing since June 2024, the widening of the rules to all devices has raised the stakes.

The public sector accounts for 27% of CCTV demand in India, and enterprise clients, industry, hospitality firms and homes the remaining 73%, according to Counterpoint.

The rules require CCTV cameras to have tamper-proof enclosures, strong malware detection and encryption.

Companies need to run software tools to test source code and provide reports to government labs, two camera industry executives said.

The rules allow labs to ask for source code if companies are using proprietary communication protocols in devices, rather than standard ones like Wi-Fi. They also enable Indian officials to visit device makers abroad and inspect facilities for cyber vulnerabilities.

The Indian unit of China's Infinova told IT ministry officials last month the requirements were creating challenges.

"Expectations such as source code sharing, retesting post firmware upgrades, and multiple factory audits significantly impact internal timelines," Infinova sales executive Sumeet Chanana said in an email on April 10. Infinova didn't respond to Reuters questions.

The same day, Sanjeev Gulati, India director for Taiwan-based Vivotek, warned Indian officials that "All ongoing projects will go on halt." He told Reuters this month that Vivotek had submitted product applications and hoped "to get clearance soon."

The body that examines surveillance gear is India's Standardization Testing and Quality Certification Directorate, which comes under the IT ministry. The agency has 15 labs that can review 28 applications concurrently, according to data on its website that was removed after Reuters sent questions. Each application can include up to 10 models.

As of May 28, 342 applications for hundreds of models from various manufacturers were pending, official data showed. Of those, 237 were classified as new, with 142 lodged since the April 9 deadline.

Testing had been completed on 35 of those applications, including just one from a foreign company.

India's CP Plus told Reuters it had received clearance for its flagship cameras but several more models were awaiting certification.

Bosch said it too had submitted devices for testing, but asked that Indian authorities "allow business continuity" for those products until the process is completed.

When Reuters visited New Delhi's bustling Nehru Place electronics market last week, shelves were stacked with popular CCTV cameras from Hikvision, Dahua and CP Plus.

But Sagar Sharma said revenue at his CCTV retail shop had plunged about 50% this month from April because of the slow pace of government approvals for security cameras.

On Monday, an investigator’s story finally hit the news cycle: Pro V&V, one of only two federally accredited testing labs, approved sweeping last-minute updates to ES&S voting machines in the months leading up to the 2024 election—without independent testing, public disclosure, or full certification review.

These changes were labeled “de minimis”—a term meant for trivial tweaks. But they touched ballot scanners, altered reporting software, and modified audit files—yet were all rubber-stamped with no oversight.

That revelation is a shock to the public.

But for those who’ve been digging into the bizarre election data since November, this isn’t the headline—it’s the final piece to the puzzle. While Pro V&V was quietly updating equipment in plain sight, a parallel operation was unfolding behind the curtain—between tech giants and Donald Trump.

And it started with a long forgotten sale.

A Power Cord Becomes a Backdoor

In March 2021, Leonard Leo—the judicial kingmaker behind the modern conservative legal machine—sold a quiet Chicago company by the name of Tripp Lite for $1.65 billion. The buyer: Eaton Corporation, a global power infrastructure conglomerate that just happened to have a partnership with Peter Thiel’s Palantir.

To most, Tripp Lite was just a hardware brand—battery backups, surge protectors, power strips. But in America’s elections, Tripp Lite devices were something else entirely.

They are physically connected to ES&S central tabulators and Electionware servers, and Dominion tabulators and central servers across the country. And they aren’t dumb devices. They are smart UPS units—programmable, updatable, and capable of communicating directly with the election system via USB, serial port, or Ethernet.

ES&S systems, including central tabulators and Electionware servers, rely on Tripp Lite UPS devices. ES&S’s Electionware suite runs on Windows OS, which automatically trusts connected UPS hardware.

If Eaton pushed an update to those UPS units, it could have gained root-level access to the host tabulation environment—without ever modifying certified election software.

In Dominion’s Democracy Suite 5.17, the drivers for these UPS units are listed as “optional”—meaning they can be updated remotely without triggering certification requirements or oversight. Optional means unregulated. Unregulated means invisible. And invisible means perfect for infiltration.

...

Enter the ballot scrubbing platform BallotProof. Co-created by Ethan Shaotran, a longtime employee of Elon Musk and current DOGE employee, BallotProof was pitched as a transparency solution—an app to “verify” scanned ballot images and support election integrity.

With Palantir's AI controlling the backend, and BallotProof cleaning the front, only one thing was missing: the signal to go live.

September 2024: Eaton and Musk Make It Official

Then came the final public breadcrumb:

In September 2024, Eaton formally partnered with Elon Musk.

The stated purpose? A vague, forward-looking collaboration focused on “grid resilience” and “next-generation communications.”

But buried in the partnership documents was this line:

“Exploring integration with Starlink's emerging low-orbit DTC infrastructure for secure operational continuity.”

The Activation: Starlink Goes Direct-to-Cell

That signal came on October 30, 2024—just days before the election, Musk activated 265 brand new low Earth orbit (LEO) V2 Mini satellites, each equipped with Direct-to-Cell (DTC) technology capable of processing, routing, and manipulating real-time data, including voting data, through his satellite network.

DTC doesn’t require routers, towers, or a traditional SIM. It connects directly from satellite to any compatible device—including embedded modems in “air-gapped” voting systems, smart UPS units, or unsecured auxiliary hardware.

From that moment on:

- Commands could be sent from orbit

- Patch delivery became invisible to domestic monitors

- Compromised devices could be triggered remotely

This groundbreaking project that should have taken two-plus years to build, was completed in just under ten months.

Elon Musk boasts endlessly about everything he’s launching, building, buying—or even just thinking about—whether it’s real or not. But he pulls off one of the largest and fastest technological feats in modern day history… and says nothing? One might think that was kind of… “weird.”

According to New York Times reporting, on October 5—just before Starlink’s DTC activation—Musk texted a confidant:

“I’m feeling more optimistic after tonight. Tomorrow we unleash the anomaly in the matrix.”

Then, an hour later:

“This isn’t something on the chessboard, so they’ll be quite surprised. ‘Lasers’ from space.”

It read like a riddle. In hindsight, it was a blueprint.

...

The Outcome

Data that makes no statistical sense. A clean sweep in all seven swing states.

The fall of the Blue Wall. Eighty-eight counties flipped red—not one flipped blue.

Every victory landed just under the threshold that would trigger an automatic recount. Donald Trump outperformed expectations in down-ballot races with margins never before seen—while Kamala Harris simultaneously underperformed in those exact same areas.

If one were to accept these results at face value—Donald Trump, a 34-count convicted felon, supposedly outperformed Ronald Reagan. According to the co-founder of the Election Truth Alliance:

“These anomalies didn’t happen nationwide. They didn’t even happen across all voting methods—this just doesn’t reflect human voting behavior.”

They were concentrated.

Targeted.

Specific to swing states and Texas—and specific to Election Day voting.

And the supposed explanation? “Her policies were unpopular.”

Let’s think this through logically. We’re supposed to believe that in all the battleground states, Democratic voters were so disillusioned by Vice President Harris’s platform that they voted blue down ballot—but flipped to Trump at the top of the ticket?

Not in early voting.

Not by mail.

With exception to Nevada, only on Election Day.

And only after a certain threshold of ballots had been cast—where VP Harris’s numbers begin to diverge from her own party, and Trump’s suddenly begin to surge. As President Biden would say, “C’mon, man.”

In the world of election data analysis, there’s a term for that: vote-flipping algorithm.

...

And of course, Donald Trump himself:

He spent a year telling his followers he didn’t need their votes—at one point stating,