An 11-year-old hacked a government website and changed election results at DEFCON



Last Friday, an 11-year-old apparently managed change election results within 10 minutes. While at this year’s DEFCON, he and many other children were offered the chance to hack into a mock-up of a Secretary of State website, and did so with alacrity.

According to DEFCON spokespeople, the kids were offered 13 replicas of Secretary of State websites, with Florida being the first. 11-year-old Emmett Brewster was able to hack it inside 10 minutes.


 
That’s…wow, what the heck was I doing at 11?

Emmett was one of about 50 children between the ages of 8 and 16 who took part in a kid-specific workshop at this year’s hacker conference. According to Quartz, the kids were able to manipulate various things on the mock websites, including vote counts, candidate names, and party names.

The National Association of Secretaries of State, the organization for public election officials, also issued a statement on the hack:

Our main concern with the approach taken by DEFCON is that it utilizes a pseudo environment which in no way replicates state election systems, networks or physical security. 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. We are also concerned that creating “mock” election office networks and voter registration databases for participants to defend and/or hack is also unrealistic.

That seems a little fussy, doesn’t it? Precisely replicating the physical environment of a voting booth isn’t exactly what these exercises are about, and focusing on that doesn’t address the flaws DEFCON attendees — and apparently at least one child — did find.

Nico Sell, founder of nonprofit r00tz Asylum, which teaches kids about white-hat hacking, told PBS NewsHour the flaws found by Emmett and other children at the event were “the real thing,” also saying:

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.

Others have criticized DEFCON’s Voting Village, where attendees attempt to crack voting machines, for providing an unrealistic display of voting circumstance, including Election Systems and Software (ES & S), one of the major providers of election equipment. It was quick to reassure customers the machines wouldn’t actually be as physically accessible on election day as they were at DEFCON.


In response to ES & S, DEFCON officials released a statement criticizing them for avoiding the issue:

ES&S’s unclear comments and threats towards the Voting Village seem to be designed to create questions and cast doubt in the minds of researchers and election officials, discouraging them from pursuing these vital lines of inquiry. At a time when there is significant concern about the integrity of our election system, the public needs now more than ever to know that election equipment has been rigorously evaluated and that vulnerabilities are not just being swept under the rug.

If nothing else, I look forward to seeing the kids to echo the achievement of DEFCONs past by rickrolling mock election websites.


http://wapnetrealm.com/11-year-old-hacked-government-website-changed-election-results-defcon/

this is the kind of thing we want in this country, training our kids skills and not SARS busy going around looking for boys with laptop to arrest,
If these kids are in Nigeria I believe they will be tagged as Yahoo boys or girls

.........and an eleven year old in Nigeria is being taught 'A computer is an electronic device bla bla bla........!!'

Chai! am 32 and still learning programming basics

Ok

Wawu this kain boy go breeze through all 9ja banks like say he dey play mario

Good boy

they should send him to Nigeria ASAP to help us flush bubu out

post=70260289:
.........and an eleven year old is Nigeria is being taught A computer is an electronic device bla bla bla........!!

Our entire syllabus for most of these subjects being taught is old and outdated. Unfortunately, those at the helm of affairs are very slow in coming around to effecting the desired change. Several entreaties have been made to the Ministry of Education concerning what needs to be done, but they always decline.

Big private schools on the other hand are at par with what is obtainable outside of Nigeria. If you have your money, do your due diligence and send your kids to very good private schools here. Most of them now use Cambridge syllabuses. Classes like programming and electronics are also taught at secondary school level. But they are darn expensive.

11 YEARS I WAS STILL LEARNING WHAT IS COMPUTER

Quick one






Avast is the best anti virus in the market

F

Kids with itching fingers. I would have done worst if I wanted to

Good luck to the young kid

OK

he is Antichrist

And an 18year old Nigerian somewhere is just learning the basics of computer at one kiosk because of his/her UTME...

The guy ancestors migrated to US from the CRIMINALS REPUBLIC OF BIAF......








I WAN GO SHIT SMALL ABEG

chuks34:
they should send him to Nigeria ASAP to help us flush bubu out

why d hate for your president

..

I'm afraid this is rather impressive.

if to na for Nigeria, they'll be dump in DSS or SARS cells to rot

Carefully with your phones because they are not even safe these are Clear Signs Your Phone Was Hacked

keep watch

Josh44s:


President or walking corpse

They are coming for you.

Very impressive.