My Pillow founder claims Sioux Falls cyber symposium delayed by hacking

SIOUX FALLS, S.D. (Dakota News Now) - My Pillow founder Mike Lindell kicked off his three-day cyber symposium Tuesday in Sioux Falls.

Lindell says over the next three days, he will prove that the 2020 presidential election was hacked by a foreign country.

But he claims the event was the victim of hacking itself. He said the symposium’s website, which includes a live stream of the event was hacked, which led to a delay in the program Tuesday morning.

Lindell never provided any evidence of the alleged hacking.

Lindell claims to have the entirety of the presidential election results in the form of packet captures from all 50 states.

Dakota News Now I-Team Reporter Beth Warden spoke to Lindell last month about the symposium.

“It’s been crooked it’s the biggest crime ever,” said Lindell. “It was massive. It was across every state. And believe me, it’s big here in Sioux Falls.”

But cybersecurity experts have their doubts about Lindell’s claims and the information that he says is included in the packet captures.

Brian Linder is an emerging threats expert with Check Point Media. It’s listed among the top ten of cybersecurity companies in the world according to the University of San Diego. Linder spoke to Dakota News Now last month.

“A packet capture is basically eavesdropping on a computer network, it’s nothing more than that,” Linder said. “The ability to say, what conversations are happening between a device and another device on a network. What they’re going to do with it? Not too much, It’s encrypted. It can’t be trivially decrypted.”

“Experts looked at the so-called packet captures that he had. And in fact, it was not an encrypted packet capture at all,” said Linder. “As a matter of fact, it was an unencrypted stream of meaningless data that mentioned clothing manufacturers it had nothing to do with voting. So he claims to have a raw packet capture that’s encrypted. He doesn’t have that that’s absolutely a false claim based on the data he provided. Completely false.”

Lindell has offered a $5 million challenge to prove his claims wrong.

The event is by invitation only for cyber experts, politicians, and the media. But Tuesday morning he also told the crowd the media is terrible.

Before the event, Lindell said members of the media would be able to freely watch the cyber experts do their work but that changed Tuesday morning. He says when his experts discover “big news” they will let a portion of the media in the separate analysis area to observe the process.

The event is only available to the public through a live stream.

No politicians from South Dakota are in attendance. Governor Kristi Noem is not at the event either.

Dakota News Now I-Team Reporter Beth Warden is at the event and will have more about the event Tuesday evening on Dakota News Now.