Florida – An 11-year-old boy managed to hack into a replica of Florida’s election results website in 10 minutes and change names and tallies during a hackers convention, organizers said, stoking concerns about security ahead of nationwide votes.
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The boy was the quickest of 35 children, ages 6 to 17, who all eventually hacked into copies of the websites of six swing states during the three-day Def Con security convention over the weekend, the event said on Twitter on Tuesday.
The event was meant to test the strength of U.S. election infrastructure and details of the vulnerabilities would be passed onto the states, it added.
The National Association of Secretaries of State – who are responsible for tallying votes – said it welcomed the convention’s efforts. But it said the actual systems used by states would have additional protections.
“It would be extremely difficult to replicate these systems since many states utilize unique networks and custom-built databases with new and updated security protocols,” the association said.
The hacking demonstration came as concerns swirl about election system vulnerabilities before mid-term state and federal elections.
U.S President Donald Trump’s national security team warned two weeks ago that Russia had launched “pervasive” efforts to interfere in the November polls.
Participants at the convention changed party names and added as many as 12 billion votes to candidates, the event said.
“Candidate names were changed to ‘Bob Da Builder’ and ‘Richard Nixon’s head’,” the convention tweeted.
The convention linked to what it said was the Twitter account of the winning boy – named there as Emmett Brewer from Austin, Texas.
A screenshot posted on the account showed he had managed to change the name of the winning candidate on the replica Florida website to his own and gave himself billions of votes.
The convention’s “Voting Village” also aimed to expose security issues in other systems such as digital poll books and memory-card readers.
We ought to give this young person a cash reward.
The Department of Homeland said last year that 21 states had experienced initial probing of their election systems from Russian hackers in 2016 .
A massive U.S. government spending bill has earmarked $250 million to counter Russian influence in the wake of allegations about Russia’s meddling in the 2016 U.S. presidential elections.
This was eliminated.
Sad.
So very sad.
Amazing Obama knew about this for years yet did nothing on the home that someone would hack into the 2016 elections and help Hillary win
This has been the case for decades. It has always been may the best hacker win. Now that their own candidate lost, they all cry about about it.
I can’t believe all the Trump supporters blaming Obama and Hillary rather than simply saying that the system has to be fixed.
I personally think that the NYState system is good in that actual physical paper ballots are retained for examination and recount.