Skip to content
Search AI Powered

Latest Stories

Kids at a Hacking Conference Just Exposed Serious Vulnerabilities In Our Election Systems

Kids at a Hacking Conference Just Exposed Serious Vulnerabilities In Our Election Systems

Will the vulnerabilities be addressed in time for the midterms?

At the DEFCON hacking conference in Las Vegas, kids aged 8-16 had the chance to hack into simulated US election systems — and they found it alarmingly quick and easy.

Emmett Brewer, an 11-year-old Texan, was able to access a duplicate of Florida’s state election website in under 10 minutes. Once inside, he changed the vote tallies in the site to award himself 239 billion votes in less than five minutes. An 11-year-old girl was able to perform the same hack in about 15 minutes.


A 17-year-old from Washington went farther, using easily Googled shutdown commands to completely crash a midterm election simulation. All vote counts were lost, and the website presented an execution error. It took him 10 minutes. “And I’m not even a very good hacker,” he said.

These election vulnerabilities were on show at DEFCON 26, an annual hacking conference in Las Vegas. This year, organizers launched the Voting Machine Village, and invited youth attendees to manipulate candidate names and vote totals in hardware and software used in several battleground states. About 50 kids participated in the Village, and they found plenty of vulnerabilities.

In the Diebold TSX machine, widely deployed in hundreds of counties and cities nationwide (including the swing states of Pennsylvania, Ohio, Wisconsin and Virginia), hackers found SSL certificates that expired in 2013 which means each machine is subject to all vulnerabilities in that software cataloged in the past five years. One hacker was able to upload a Linux OS to a Diebold TSX and then programmed the machine to play gifs and music.

The Diebold Express Poll 5000 was found to be even more vulnerable (again). That machine’s memory cards are easily accessible at the top of the machine, and another market-purchased card with alternative information and vote tallies can be inserted in its place. Switching the two cards can be done in less than five seconds. Once removed, the original cards can be accessed by a hacker to collect unencrypted supervisor passwords and voters’ personal data. Voter information gathered included home addresses, drivers’ license numbers, and the last four digits of Social Security Numbers. In the most embarrassing cases, the unencrypted password was “Password.”

All told, Voting Machine Village co-organizer Nico Sell said that more than 30 children were able to hack into other states’ website duplicates in half an hour or less.

“These are very accurate replicas of all of the sites,” Sell told the PBS NewsHour. “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.”

In response to the event’s widespread publicity, the National Association of Secretaries of State (NASS) issued a statement re-confirming their states’ election security.

“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,” NASS said in a statement. They added that they welcome cooperation from the hacker community to eliminate any vulnerabilities.

The good news is that Brewer, the 11-year-old hacker from Texas, is on board with increasing voter security and confidence.

"I'm just trying to help the world," he said.

More from News

Screenshot of Stephen Colbert
CBS

Stephen Colbert Makes Somber Plea To Americans In Wake Of Charlie Kirk's Death

Late-night host Stephen Colbert had a somber message for Americans as he addressed the assassination of far-right activist Charlie Kirk, stressing that "political violence only leads to more political violence."

Kirk died after an unidentified gunman shot him in the neck as he—ironically enough—mocked victims of gun violence at an event in Utah Valley State University. Kirk's murder has galvanized the far-right, with President Donald Trump and his surrogates claiming without evidence that rhetoric from Democrats is responsible for Kirk's death.

Keep ReadingShow less
a woman sunbathing on rocks.
a person sitting on a towel on a beach
Photo by Annie Spratt on Unsplash

People Share The Weirdest Flexes They Heard Someone Say With A Straight Face

It is never attractive to gloat.

Even so, some people can't help but brag, or "flex" as it is sometimes known, about certain accomplishments or attributes.

Keep ReadingShow less
Screenshots from @thedowntheredoc's TikTok video
@thedowntheredoc/TikTok

TikToker Hilariously Calls Out Target After Champion Pants Feature Awkwardly-Placed Front Pleat

Sometimes you can just tell when something was designed *for* women, but was not actually designed *by* women.

Take, for instance, the new pleated pants available at Target from the Champion clothing line. While there's nothing wrong with pleated pants and they certainly have a suitable spot in the workplace, the latest rendition of Champion pleated pants are, shall we say, NSFW.

Keep ReadingShow less
Screenshots from @kaicutch's Instagram video
@kaicutch/Instagram

Woman Flips Her Car After Belting Out Ironic Britney Spears Lyric In Wild Viral Video

Whether we want to admit it or not, we've all had our fair share of carpool karaoke and maybe even imagined our car as our own personal recording studio.

But TikToker and Instagrammer Kaitlynn McCutcheon may have gotten too into her performance of Britney Spears' classic, "Hit Me Baby, One More Time," when the road and her car both said, "Bet."

Keep ReadingShow less
Screenshots from ​@lynnshazeen's TikTok video
@lynnshazeen/TikTok

Woman Goes Viral After Revealing How Her Obsession With Matcha Landed Her In The Hospital

Let's be honest: Too much of anything isn't good for us. It's all about the balance!

But the media and social media trends have taught us that certain things are really good for us, encouraging us to be like the "very mindful and very demure" girls and take care of ourselves. One such example is drinking more matcha, especially if you really like coffee or think you have a caffeine addiction.

Keep ReadingShow less