Electoral Cyber Security Is So Weak A Child Can Hack It

(Image is from pixabay.com.)

It is now beyond doubt that Russia attacked our electoral system in 2016. It wasn't just that they posted fake stories on social media. They actually hacked the official election websites of at least 25 states, and in many they actually were able to access voter rolls.

Donald Trump has called it a hoax, because he doesn't want to admit he was helped to win in 2016 by the Russians -- and he has refused to take any action to improve electoral cyber security in this country. In fact, he has even eliminated the White House Office of Cyber Security (which was the office to coordinate an improvement of cyber security).

The Republican Congress is no better. While they admit the Russians did do a cyber attack on our electoral systems in 2016, they claim that no votes were changed. And they have killed a bill that would have provided many millions to states for cyber security improvements. They don't seem to think this is a serious problem.

They are wrong. Our cyber security system in many (if not all) states is so weak that it can be hacked by a child. And actual voting results don't have to be changed to affect the outcome of an election. Simply deleting a few hundred voters from voter rolls in a competitive district WLL affect the outcome of a race.

Consider this article from Michael D. Regan at PBS.org:

An 11-year-old boy 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 during the world’s largest yearly hacking convention, DEFCON 26, organizers of the event said. 

Thousands of adult hackers attend the convention annually, while this year a group of children attempted to hack 13 imitation websites linked to voting in presidential battleground states.

The boy, who was identified by DEFCON officials as Emmett Brewer, accessed a replica of the Florida secretary of state’s website. He was one of about 50 children between the ages of 8 and 16 who were taking part in the so-called “DEFCON Voting Machine Hacking Village,” a portion of which allowed kids the chance to manipulate party names, candidate names and vote count totals.

Nico Sell, the co-founder of the the non-profit r00tz Asylum, which teaches children how to become hackers and helped organize the event, said an 11-year-old girl also managed to make changes to the same Florida replica website in about 15 minutes, tripling the number of votes found there. 

Sell said more than 30 children hacked a variety of other similar state replica websites in under a half hour. 

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

Sell said the idea for the event began last year, after adult hackers were able to access similar voting sites in less than five minutes. 

“So this year we decided to bring the voting village to the kids as well,” she said. . . .

“I think the general public does not understand how large a threat this is, and how serious a situation that we’re in right now with our democracy,” she said.

Matt Blaze, a professor of computer and information science at the University of Pennsylvania who helped organize the “hacking village,” said that thousands of adults including voting security experts also tried to access voting machines and other voting software currently being used in U.S. elections today to become “more knowledgeable about voter technology.” 

He also noted that the children who participated in their own challenge last week were dealing with replicas that were in many cases created to be even more formidable to access than the actual websites used by secretaries of states across the nation. 

“It’s not surprising that these precocious, bright kids would be able to do it because the websites that are on the internet are vulnerable, we know they are vulnerable,” he said. “What was interesting is just how utterly quickly they were able to do it.”