The Voting Machine Hacking Village (Voting Village) returned to DEF CON in August 2019 with a dramatic expansion in election equipment research and evaluation. DEF CON, the world’s largest and best-known hacker conference, brings together a wide range of attendees including hackers; cybersecurity professionals; journalists; academics; lawyers; and local, state and federal government leaders. The Voting Village, now in its third year, saw a dramatic increase in attendance and participation, particularly from state, local, and federal government officials.
Since its launch in 2017, the Voting Village has served as an open forum to identify vulnerabilities within the U.S. election infrastructure and to consider solutions to mitigate these vulnerabilities. This year, the Voting Village demonstrated the role that hackers and other cybersecurity experts can, and should, have in the national endeavor to improve election security.
Over the course of two and a half days, hackers, technologists, academics, and other experts had full access to over 100 Voting-Village-owned voting machines to study, as well as the opportunity to attend talks and panels on topics ranging from the challenges involved in reporting on election security to the types of risk-limiting audits.
The clear conclusion of the Voting Village in 2019 is that independent security experts and hackers are stepping into the breach – providing expertise, answers, and solutions to election administrators, policymakers, and ordinary citizens where few others can.
While the discovery and replication of voting system security vulnerabilities are critical tasks for which the Voting Village plays an important role, that is not, in our view, its main contribution. Hundreds of security experts passed through the doors over the course of the weekend, many of whom had no previous experience with the particular problems and risks inherent to election technology. It is vital that we expand the pool of security experts equipped with the specialized knowledge required to evaluate, and ultimately improve, voting system security. We are especially proud of the success of the Voting Village in this essential education and outreach role.
From the outset, the mission of the Voting Village has been to highlight vulnerabilities in election equipment used in the United States and throughout the world and to serve as a resource for those whose goal is to improve the state of election security. As Voting Village organizer Harri Hursti emphasized, “As always we welcome everyone, but especially we welcome officials. We are here to help and get everyone informed – and let everyone experiment to verify the facts.”
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