![]() Nate Young, the director of IT for the Maricopa County Recorder’s Office, described his work to debunk conspiracy theories as “a full-time job,” adding that “when I get to do my actual job, it feels weird.” Maricopa officials said they’re still getting pummeled by misinformation around the county’s election security and voting integrity, along with physical threats for their continued efforts to debunk the claims. “Please demand sources, demand data,” he said. Michael Moore, the information security officer for the Maricopa County Recorder’s Office, urged attendees during a session on Saturday not to accept claims of election fraud without proof. (In fact, the officials said, no county machines were equipped with the technology to allow a satellite to have any impact, and these ballots could not have been flown in undetected.) They also noted steps they’ve taken since 2020 to try to prevent these theories from bubbling up in the first place, including putting in place a 24-hour video stream for the public to watch the vote counting and using stringent audit and accuracy counts. ![]() The Arizona officials methodically debunked claims including false allegations that Italians had used satellites to infiltrate voting devices in the county and that election officials had flown in thousands of ballots from Asia. Officials from Maricopa County, Ariz., discussed debunked yet ongoing conspiracy theories, often championed by Trump supporters, alleging widespread fraud in the county’s 2020 election results. A former National Security Council official spoke about how disinformation targets minority voters. This year, though, the Voting Village included nearly as much attention to how to combat lies about widespread fraud in elections. elections are run - with each state and even county using different voting systems and election protocols - is a further protection. But organizers are quick to stress that it would be difficult to exploit the vulnerabilities on a large scale, and in many cases attackers would need to have physical access to the machines. The findings have fueled calls to move back to using paper ballots or machines with paper records to verify votes. The 2019 edition exposed vulnerabilities in various machines that participants said could allow vote tallies to be changed, ballots to be displayed incorrectly, and internal software to be altered. ![]() At the 2018 event, an 11-year-old hacked into a fake version of Florida’s state election websites in less than 10 minutes. At others, they whipped out laptops to connect to equipment and digitally scan the devices.ĭEF CON attendees have a history of finding shocking weaknesses in the machines. In some spots, groups of hackers crowded around tables to physically pull apart machines. “What we try to do is to make certain that the right message gets out.” That “right message,” he said, is that elections are safer because researchers are searching out these vulnerabilities.Īt this year’s Voting Village, hundreds of attendees wandered among tables in a cavernous conference room at Caesar’s Forum, inspecting ballot scanners, voter registration devices and computers running voter database software. “When it’s in a digital format, the misuse of clips is inevitable,” Hursti said. Hursti noted the organizers can’t control how that news footage is used once it gets out in the world. Hursti said other 2020 candidates also used clips from DEF CON to cast doubt on the security of elections. “All the security improvements hampered by all the false claims, conspiracies - and fighting those,” Hursti said.įollowing the 2020 presidential election, then-President Donald Trump tweeted out an NBC News report from DEF CON to allege security flaws in equipment from voting machine company Dominion. ![]() The issue is personal for the hackers who come to the Voting Village, many of whom have spent years both researching election security and pushing election equipment manufacturers to publicly disclose these vulnerabilities - a move many of the companies have opposed.
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