11-Year-Old Student Hacks Florida Election Results in 10 Minutes

An 11-year-old student managed to hack a replica of the Florida Secretary of State’s website and alter the voting results section in just 10 minutes.

As previously reported by SecurityLab, the Democratic National Committee established a special prize for any child who could hack the national voting system and propose the most effective security strategy during the Defcon conference. According to the Committee, the U.S. voting system is so vulnerable that even a schoolchild could hack it, and the results of the children’s competition at Defcon confirmed these concerns.

DEFCON Voting Machine Hacking Village Competition

During the DEFCON Voting Machine Hacking Village event, children aged 8 to 16 were invited to hack parts of state secretaries’ websites that play a key role in voting infrastructure. However, participants were not hacking real resources, but rather their exact replicas.

Emmett Brewer, an 11-year-old from Austin, managed to hack an exact copy of the Florida Secretary of State’s website in just 10 minutes, according to PBS. By performing an SQL injection, he was able to change the data in the section displaying voting results.

Emmett was far from the only one to succeed. Out of 47 young participants, more than 30 managed to hack the replica websites and alter the voting results data.

Expert Reactions

The National Association of Secretaries of State expressed skepticism about the organizers’ ability to create accurate replicas of the websites. “It is extremely difficult to create replicas of these systems, as many states use unique networks and custom databases with updated security protocols,” experts from the Association noted.