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. With the 2024 election under intense scrutiny, especially after unproven claims of widespread fraud in 2020, there’s even more pressure to make sure voting machines are secure, reports Politico.
At the DEF CON event, known as the “Voting Village,” hackers spent three days trying to break into different types of voting machines. Meanwhile, election officials gave talks about the threats of misinformation and how it could impact the upcoming election. But the event had to be kept low-profile. In recent years, the Voting Village has faced backlash from people who believe these hackers are undermining democracy, even though the goal is to protect it.
As expected, the hackers found several security problems, just like they do every year. Harri Hursti, one of the event’s co-founders, mentioned that the list of vulnerabilities discovered was already several pages long by Saturday afternoon. Although the exact issues weren’t shared, the amount of problems found was consistent with previous years.
These discoveries are especially concerning because foreign hackers, like those from Russia in 2016, have tried to interfere with U.S. elections before. Although no major attacks have taken down voting machines or changed results so far, the risk is always there.
The process to fix these problems is slow. After a vulnerability is found, the voting machine manufacturers need to create a patch, get approval from authorities, and then update every machine. This takes time, and most machines are locked down weeks before the election, making last-minute fixes nearly impossible.
Hackers and security experts at DEF CON are frustrated that voting machine companies aren’t moving faster to fix these issues. Hursti voiced his anger, saying that basic security improvements should have been made years ago.
There are some ideas to speed up the process, such as holding regular, formal events where hackers and voting machine vendors work together to find and fix problems. But for now, the DEF CON event serves as an important, if sometimes frustrating, way to keep our election systems safe.
Catherine Terranova, one of the event organizers, summed it up: “We may not be able to fix everything about our election system in the next 90 days, but we can start by getting some of our facts straight and by understanding how our election systems work.”
With the election just around the corner, the question remains—will these security gaps be fixed in time, or could they leave the door open for chaos on Election Day?
