During the DEF CON Voting Village event, a cybersecurity conference held in Las Vegas, Nevada (USA), hackers identified several vulnerabilities in electronic voting equipment used in some American states.
The event, which began last Sunday (11) and continued until Tuesday (13), had the participation of hackers to examine the security of voting machines and digital systems known as “e-poll books”, electronic electoral notebooks used to verify the identity of voters and prevent duplicate votes.
The American newspaper Politico reported that these hackers were called to participate in the test with the mission of detecting flaws in these devices that could be corrected before the presidential elections scheduled for November 5. However, the complexity of the problems found by these hackers in the machines and systems is so great that, according to the newspaper, there is not enough time to implement the necessary corrections by the election date.
The information about this discovery raises significant concerns about the security of the November election and the integrity of the American electoral process. According to analysts interviewed by Politico, the process of correcting the vulnerabilities discovered by the hackers would be complex and time-consuming, involving steps that would require more than 90 days to be completed. The lack of time indicates that, even with the vulnerabilities identified, some of these machines could still be used.
Catherine Terranova, one of the organizers of the DEF CON Voting Village, told Politico that she was frustrated that the flaws discovered during the event were not fixed before Election Day. The lack of a quick fix system for such vulnerabilities has also drawn criticism from groups responsible for US election security, who see the problem as a strong argument for those who have the idea of questioning the official results of the election, the American newspaper reported.
As reported by Politico, during the Voting Village, participants tested a wide range of equipment used during the American elections, trying to overcome firewalls and other protective measures, with the aim of identifying the main security flaws.
The issues detected during this test were not publicly specified during the event, but the Voting Village organization plans to provide a full report on the vulnerabilities found in the coming days.
U.S. election security has faced intense scrutiny and concern, particularly with the growing risk of foreign interference in the electoral process. Reports from Microsoft and other sources suggest that countries including China, Russia and Iran are working to threaten the integrity of the November election.
Different systems
The US electoral system has a variety of voting methods, each regulated and applied according to the specific rules of each state, which have autonomy to define their own voting systems and counting procedures.
The main methods of voter registration used by Americans include paper ballots, where voters fill out the ballot by hand and it is scanned at a polling place or counting center; Direct Recording Electronic (DRE) systems, which use electronic machines and record votes directly into digital memory and can include printers for vote confirmation (this is the machine that was tested by hackers); and Ballot Marking Devices (BMD), which allow voters to mark their choices on a paper ballot with the help of touch-sensitive interfaces and accessibility features.
In the last presidential election, in 2020, only the state of Louisiana used only the DRE as a method of recording votes. Others that used the equipment also used an additional system to confirm the vote.
In this year’s elections, according to information from the American media, paper ballots are expected to be used by 69% of voters, while DRE systems are expected to be used by 5% of voters and BMD devices by almost 26% (as they are used by voters with special needs).
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