Back home from Las Vegas, another successful year of captioning DEF CON. This year they gave us speaker pins to thank us AND IM WEARING THIS EVERY DAY.
An 11-year-old 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.
Florida is a swing state whose electoral votes are hotly contested. It was the decisive state in the 2000 election which put Republican George W. Bush in the White House.
Despite its importance, Florida has been lax about cybersecurity.
In 2018 Emmett Brewer, an 11-year-old, was able to hack into a replica of Florida’s election website and alter data in less than 10 minutes. Emmett was soon joined by an 11-year-old girl who took 15 minutes. This was part of an organized (and legal) youth event at last year’s DEFCON -- the world’s largest hacking conference.
So why does Russia need the Internet Research Agency (Агентство интернет-исследований) when Putin could simply contract some tweens and pay them with gift cards from Hollister?
Seriously, DEFCON VotingVillage is an effort designed to point out digital vulnerabilities in our electoral system and suggest fixes for them. These are the good hackers who we really need to listen to. They have a packed schedule at DEFCON 27 which is getting underway today in Nevada.