US election 2020: ‘Why I bought a voting machine on eBay’

“Earlier this year, I attended a conference and was shocked to find that you could actually buy voting machines on eBay. So I bought one, two months ago, and have been able to open it up and look at the chips.”

Beatrice Atobatele is trying to hack one of the most commonly used voting machines in the US, to look for security vulnerabilities, but not with any criminal intentions.

Beatrice is actually one of more than 200 people who have signed up to a volunteer group of security experts and hackers called the Election Cyber Surge.

And by understanding how this machine works, she hopes she can ensure any vulnerabilities are fixed.

“I’ve bypassed the authentication itself,” she says.

“I’m still learning and trying to find any new vulnerabilities that might not be known about yet.”

Human error

The problem with US elections, Beatrice and others say, is how disjointed they are.

Most estimates suggest there are about 8,000 separate election jurisdictions.

The equipment and voting methods vary dramatically.

And every step of the process is vulnerable to hackers and human error.

Deer peering

Christopher’s expertise is in crisis communication and management.

As a consultant, he deals with cyber-attacks that bring large corporations to their knees.

He handles everything from panicking chief executives to angry IT managers, from his rural home office overlooking the woods.

And when he has to pull all-nighters, the only company he has are the local deer peering into his window, wondering what the fuss is about.

Work fast

Over his 20 years of experience, Christopher has developed a secret weapon for when things truly hit the fan.

“I’m a huge classical music fan,” he says.

“When I really need to focus and work fast, there’s only one place I turn to – Symphony No 3 by Camille Saint-Saëns.”

Christopher hopes he won’t have to “crank out the Camille” in the next month – but he’s ready.

Leaked online

The group is also putting a huge amount of effort into data protection.

The last US and UK elections were hit by high-profile “hack and leak” operations.

In 2016, email accounts of the Democratic National Committee and some top Democrats were hacked and then leaked.