The nation's best hackers found vulnerabilities in voting machines - but no time to fix them

Organizers and participants at the DEF CON Voting Village found cyber vulnerabilities in everything from voting machines to e-poll books; but there is no time before the November elections to fully implement their findings.

In one sense, it’s the normal course of events: Every August, hackers at the DEF CON conference find security gaps in voting equipment, and every year the long and complex process of fixing them means nothing is implemented until the next electoral cycle.

But Election Day security is under particular scrutiny in 2024.

That’s both because of increasing worries that foreign adversaries will figure out how to breach machines, and because President Donald Trump’s unsubstantiated allegations of widespread fraud in 2020 undermined confidence in the vote among his supporters.

As a result, many in the election security community are bemoaning the fact that no system has been developed to roll out fixes faster and worrying that the security gaps that get identified this year will provide fodder for those who may want to question the results.

“As far as time goes, it is hard to make any real, major, systemic changes, but especially 90 days out from the election,” said Catherine Terranova, one of the organizers of the DEF CON “Voting Village” hacking event.

She argued that’s particularly troubling during “an election year like this.”

At: https://www.politico.com/news/2024/08/12/hackers-vulnerabilities-voting-machines-elections-00173668

An elderly voter votes in Los Angeles this March.

The annual DEF CON Voting Village cybersecurity summit has been warning of - and demonstrating - voting/tabulating device vulnerabilities for a decade.