The 2018 midterm elections have been racked with concerns that state voting systems could be vulnerable to attacks by highly skilled Russian intelligence agencies looking to alter poll results. But over the weekend, participants in a hacking conference proved that those interested in shaping the history of American democracy don’t need the backing of an authoritarian government to wreak havoc.
They don’t even need to have hit puberty
An 11-year-old boy changed fake voting results by hacking into an exact replica of Florida’s state election website in just 10 minutes, according to the organizers of DEF CON 26, an annual hacker convention.
The competition pitted 39 kids, age 6 to 17, against one another to see who could hack into replica election systems of six swing states across the US. Thirty-five of the 39 kids completed the “exploit” and “tampered with vote tallies, party names, [and] candidate names” within 30 minutes, according to
DEF CON....