Don't Worry, Tovarish Vladimir....

[paulpablo]

I'm not a hacker so I wouldn't be expected to understand this sort of thing.

But I still don't understand how an election can be hacked.

According to this article the types of malware they found were what the Russian intelligence use, and they're used to gain intelligence.  Steal data and release data.

It's being called an election hack but it looks to me like the specific organization being hacked is the Democratic National Committee.  To steal and release data.

The phrase election hack doesn't make much sense to me unless it is the case that Russians are directly changing the vote counts of the election in some way.

If what's happening is one side has been hacked and their information has been used to change voters mind or create stories in some way then I still find it an odd phrase to use for what's happening.

What it is is intereference by a foreign power in a successful bid to change the result of the US election. The "hack" was used influence the public.

I know.  It's the phrasing that seems odd to me.  If someone hacks Bob's computer and publishes information they don't want people to know that will make Bob less popular it would be strange to say "Bob's popularity has been subject to hackers, they hacked the popularity."

I haven't seen anyone anywhere talk about what to me seems to have actually happened, which is the DNC computers were hacked.  Saying the election was hacked seems to go straight for the assumption the result would have definitely been different if the DNC computers weren't hacked.

If the Russians did hack into the voting machines or something along those lines then it would make perfect sense to say the election was directly hacked.

Or if hacked is being used in the modern sense of where you just add hacks to a word to talk about something that's been manipulated that has made a specific thing easier or something like that.