Those Kids Who Hacked Voting Websites at Def Con Had Help

 Reports of kids effortlessly finding security flaws in state election websites at Def Con, a prominent hacking conference that was held this month in Las Vegas, were likely misleading, ProPublica is reporting. Indeed, the most widely circulated stories from this year’s conference had to do with the 40 children between the ages of 6 and 17 whom organizers set loose on replicas of election board websites. The kids were reportedly able to change the names of candidates and an 11-year-old was even able to crack a mock-up of the Florida secretary of state’s website and change the results within 10 minutes.

Election experts are now telling ProPublica that there are a number of reasons not to believe these hacks augur critical flaws in our actual voting system. For one, these websites display the results of an election, but they are not actually involved in tabulating the votes. The tabulation system is in fact housed separately from the election board websites, in part to prevent tampering. In addition, adults reportedly coached the kids to look for certain vulnerabilities in the mock-up websites, and organizers gave them cheat sheets.