Hacking Election Websites Is So Easy, an 11-Year-Old Did It

What’s the story?

• At this weekend’s DEFCON hacking conference in Las Vegas, an 11-year-old successfully hacked into a replica website for the Florida Secretary of State and changed election results.
• PBS reported that the young boy was able to hack into the Sunshine State election website in under 10 minutes as part of the “DEFCON Voting Machine Hacking Village.”

Should states be worried?

• Nico Sell, co-founder of the non-profit r00tz Asylum - which teaches children how to become hackers and helped organize the event - told PBS NewsHour:

“These are very accurate replicas of all of the sites. 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 an interview with ABC News, Jake Braun, a former White House liaison for the Department of Homeland Security, added:

"These websites are so easy to hack we couldn’t give them to adult hackers—they’d be laughed off the stage.”

• The National Association for Secretaries of State said in a statement that while they “applaud the goal of DEFCON attendees to find and report vulnerabilities in election systems,” the hacking village events don't realistically portray a scenario where these machines could be accessed.

"Providing conference attendees with unlimited physical access to voting machines, most of which are no longer in use, does not replicate accurate physical and cyber protections established by state and local governments before and on Election Day," said NASS. 

What do you think?

Do you think states are doing enough to protect the integrity of our election systems? Do you think there is more the federal government could do to support their efforts? Do you feel confident in your state’s election systems heading into the 2018 midterms? Hit Take Action and tell your reps, then share your thoughts below.

—Josh Herman

(Photo Credit: @r00tzasylum via Twitter)