Friday, July 20, 2018

These Kids Will Try to Hack an Election


DEFCON, is the World’s Largest Hacking Conference, is expected to draw close to 30,000. Conference Organizers said this year’s gathering would again feature Voting Machines, as well as opportunities to Hack into the Ohio State Voting file.

DEF CON 26 is August 9-12, 2018 at Caesars Palace and Flamingo Hotels in Las Vegas

CLICK HERE for mote information about DEF CON 26.

Hackers have invited Election Officials from across the Country to attend the Conference, offering to provide Training in Anti-Hacking Measures.

Three Elections Officials are scheduled to Speak: Noah Praetz, Director of Elections for Cook County, Illinois; Amber McReynolds, Director of Elections for Denver; and Neal Kelley, Registrar of Voters for Orange County, California.

Hackers plan to teach Children how to Break into State Election-Results Websites, hosting a Workshop in Las Vegas to demonstrate States’ Vulnerabilities and foster Civic Engagement among Hacking-minded Youth.

The Workshop, part of next month’s massive DEFCON Hacking Conference, will offer Children ages 5 to 16 “the opportunity to hack into exact replicas of the secretary of state election results websites for the thirteen presidential election battleground states, changing the vote tallies and thus the election results,” Organizers said in a Memo describing the Event.

The Event comes amid increasing concerns about Russia’s Cyberattacks in the 2016 Election, and about the Vulnerability of States’ Election Systems.

In a Survey of all 50 States, POLITICO reported this week that few States were taking steps to Improve Safeguards to their Systems before the November Election. New York is one of the States that just announced it efforts for 2018.

Calling the Workshop “the perfect opportunity to demonstrate that even kids with basic computer skills can infiltrate” States’ Websites, Jake Braun, who is helping to oversee the Event, said Thursday that Organizers would give Children Prizes based on Speed and Ingenuity in their Hacking of Results Websites, as well as a Prize for “the best social engineering idea on how to really f--- with the public.”

Braun, a White House Liaison to the Department of Homeland Security under President Barack Obama, and Executive Director of the Cyber-Policy Initiative at University of Chicago, said, “It’s so easy to hack a website that, to make it challenging, we had to give it to children to do.”

Election Officials have taken a sometimes-critical View of Hacking Demonstrations, fearful that lowering Confidence in Election Systems could Depress Turnout or Undermine Valid Votes. There has been No Evidence of Hackers altering the Outcome of an Election in the United States.

But there is indications of Altered State's Voter Rolls that disrupted 2017 Elections. Hopefully States have fixed this vulnerability for 2018.

After Targeting Voting Machines last year, Organizers said DEFCON Hackers breached every Voting Machine they tried to Hack. Braun asked, “Can you imagine if in 2020, Florida and Ohio’s websites are down but certain media outlets have announced that certain candidates have won? It would be chaos. It would be absolute pandemonium.”









NYC Wins When Everyone Can Vote! Michael H. Drucker
Digg! StumbleUpon

No comments: