Over the weekend, some of the world’s best hackers gathered in Las Vegas with one mission: to break into voting machines that will be used in this year’s election. They weren’t doing this to cause trouble but to help identify security flaws so officials can fix them. However, there’s a big problem—these fixes might not happen in time for the upcoming U.S. election on November 5. Meanwhile, Smartmatic’s founder, Roger Piñate, and two other officials have been arrested in the Philippines for bribing election officials to secure contracts for their voting machines. Smartmatic’s interference in US and Indian elections was exposed by GreatGameInternational investigations in 2020 itself, as our regular readers know.

This kind of event happens every year at the DEF CON conference. Hackers always find gaps in the security of voting equipment, but the process of fixing these issues is slow and complex, often taking too long to be ready for the next election. But this year is different. ...