11-year-old hacked a government website and changed election results.

Last Friday, an 11-year-old apparently managed change election results within 10 minutes. While at this year’s DEFCON, he and many other children were offered the chance to hack into a mock-up of a Secretary of State website and did so with alacrity.
According to DEFCON spokespeople, the kids were offered 13 replicas of Secretary of State websites, with Florida being the first. 11-year-old Emmett Brewster was able to hack it inside 10 minutes.hat’s…wow, what the heck was I doing at 11?Emmett was one of about 50 children between the ages of 8 and 16 who took part in a kid-specific workshop at this year’s hacker conference. According to Quartz, the kids were able to manipulate various things on the mock websites, including vote counts, candidate names, and party names. Precisely replicating the physical environment of a voting booth isn’t exactly what these exercises are about, and focusing on that doesn’t address the flaws DEFCON attendees and apparently at least one child did find. Nico Sell, the founder of nonprofit r00tz Asylum, which teaches kids about white-hat hacking, told PBS NewsHour the flaws found by Emmett and other children at the event were “the real thing,” also saying: Others have criticized DEFCON’s Voting Village, where attendees attempt to crack voting machines, for providing an unrealistic display of voting circumstance, including Election Systems and Software (ES & S), one of the major providers of election equipment. It was quick to reassure customers the machines wouldn’t actually be as physically accessible on election day as they were at DEFCON. In response to ES & S, DEFCON officials released a statement criticizing them for avoiding the issue. If nothing else, I look forward to seeing the kids echo the achievement of DEFCON's past by rickrolling mock election websites.