An 11-year-old changed election results on a replica Florida state website in under 10 minutes
An 11-year-old boy on Friday was able to hack into a replica of the Florida state election website and change voting results found there in under 10 minutes during the world’s largest yearly hacking convention, DEFCON 26, organizers of the event said.
Thousands of adult hackers attend the convention annually, while this year a group of children attempted to hack 13 imitation websites linked to voting in presidential battleground states.
The boy, who was identified by DEFCON officials as Emmett Brewer, accessed a replica of the Florida secretary of state’s website. He was one of about 50 children between the ages of 8 and 16 who were taking part in the so-called “DEFCON Voting Machine Hacking Village,” a portion of which allowed kids the chance to manipulate party names, candidate names, and vote count totals.
Nico Sell, the co-founder of the non-profit r00tz Asylum, which teaches children how to become hackers and helped organize the event, said an 11-year-old girl also managed to make changes to the same Florida replica website in about 15 minutes, tripling the number of votes found there.
Sell said more than 30 children hacked a variety of other similar state replica websites in under a half hour.
“These are very accurate replicas of all of the sites,” Sell told the PBS NewsHour on Sunday. “These things should not be easy enough for an 8-year-old kid to hack within 30 minutes, it’s negligent for us as a society.”
Sell said the idea for the event began last year after adult hackers were able to access similar voting sites in less than five minutes.
“So this year we decided to bring the voting village to the kids as well,” she said.
In a statement regarding the event, the National Association of Secretaries of State said it is “ready to work with civic-minded members of the DEFCON community wanting to become part of a proactive team effort to secure our elections.” But the organization expressed skepticism over the hackers’ abilities to access the actual state websites.
“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,” it read. “While it is undeniable websites are vulnerable to hackers, election night reporting websites are only used to publish preliminary, unofficial results for the public and the media. The sites are not connected to vote-counting equipment and could never change actual election results.”’
But Sell said the exercise the children took part in demonstrates the level of security vulnerabilities found in the U.S. election system.
“To me that statement says that the secretaries of states are not taking this seriously. Although it’s not the real voting results it’s the results that get released to the public. And that could cause complete chaos,” she said. “The site may be a replica but the vulnerabilities that these kids were exploiting were not replicas, they’re the real thing.”
“I think the general public does not understand how large a threat this is, and how serious a situation that we’re in right now with our democracy,” she said.
Matt Blaze, a professor of computer and information science at the University of Pennsylvania who helped organize the “hacking village,” said that thousands of adults including voting security experts also tried to access voting machines and other voting software currently being used in U.S. elections today to become “more knowledgeable about voter technology.”
He also noted that the children who participated in their own challenge last week we're dealing with replicas that were in many cases created to be even more formidable to access than the actual websites used by secretaries of states across the nation.
“It’s not surprising that these precocious, bright kids would be able to do it because the websites that are on the internet are vulnerable, we know they are vulnerable,” he said. “What was interesting is just how utterly quickly they were able to do it.”
Source:>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>Here
Share your thoughts with the world by posting a message on the Liberty Tree.
One of the penalties for refusing to participate in politics is that you end up being governed by your inferiors. -- Plato (429-347 BC)
TRY THE LIBERTY TREE AD FREE
"FIGHTING FOR FREEDOM AND LIBERTY"
and is protected speech pursuant to the "unalienable rights" of all men, and the First (and Second) Amendment to the Constitution of the United States of America, In God we trust
Stand Up To Government Corruption and Hypocrisy
NEVER FORGET THE SACRIFICES
BY OUR VETERANS Note: We at The Liberty Tree cannot make any warranties about the completeness, reliability, and accuracy of this information.
Don't forget to follow the Friends Of Liberty on Facebook and our Page also Pinterest, Twitter, Tumblr and Google Plus PLEASE help spread the word by sharing our articles on your favorite social networks.
LibertygroupFreedom 
The Patriot is a non-partisan, non-profit organization with the mission to Educate, protect and defend individual freedoms and individual rights.
Support the Trump Presidency and help us fight Liberal Media Bias. Please LIKE and SHARE this story on Facebook or Twitter.
WE THE PEOPLE
TOGETHER WE WILL MAKE AMERICA GREAT AGAIN!
Join The Resistance and Share This Article Now!
TOGETHER WE WILL MAKE AMERICA GREAT AGAIN!
Help us spread the word about THE LIBERTY TREE Blog we're reaching millions help us reach millions more.
Help us spread the word about THE LIBERTY TREE Blog we're reaching millions help us reach millions more.
‼️️ ♻️ PLEASE SHARE ♻️ ‼️️
Please SHARE this now! The Crooked Liberal Media will hide and distort the TRUTH. It’s up to us, Trump social media warriors, to get the truth out. If we don’t, no one will!
Share this story on Facebook and let us know because we want to hear YOUR voice!
Facebook has greatly reduced the distribution of our stories in our readers' newsfeeds and is instead promoting mainstream media sources. When you share with your friends, however, you greatly help distribute our content. Please take a moment and consider sharing this article with your friends and family. Thank you
Please SHARE this now! The Crooked Liberal Media will hide and distort the TRUTH. It’s up to us, Trump social media warriors, to get the truth out. If we don’t, no one will!
Share this story on Facebook and let us know because we want to hear YOUR voice!
Facebook has greatly reduced the distribution of our stories in our readers' newsfeeds and is instead promoting mainstream media sources. When you share with your friends, however, you greatly help distribute our content. Please take a moment and consider sharing this article with your friends and family. Thank you
No comments:
Post a Comment