Ahead of the US midterms in November, the MSM has talked at length about a Russian hacking threat. Meanwhile, a competition in Las Vegas shows that when it comes to interfering with a US election, even a child can do it.
Hosted by technology non-profit R00tz Asylum, the competition was held on the sidelines of the annual Def Con hacking conference in Las Vegas, where children between the ages of 8 and 17 were tasked with hacking into replica election office websites in key “battleground” states where the upcoming US midterm elections in November are expected to be tight.
Of the 39 contestants who entered, 35 were successful in breaking into the sites with the fastest being 11-year old Audrey Jones. She cracked the site’s code in just 10 minutes.
While R00tz Asylum’s mantra is “hacking for good,” it exposes glaring vulnerabilities to the cyber security of the US election system despite a whopping $380 million approved by Congress to improve cyber-security for elections in 2018 alone.
Election websites aren’t the only ones open to manipulation. Without any specialist equipment, a voting machine used in 18 different states can be easily hacked by anyone to gain admin access in under two minutes, showing you don’t need to be a Russian hacker or child prodigy to mess with the US midterms.
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