Georgia’s Brian Kemp Decides To Dox Absentee Voters, Revealing Why They All Voted Absentee

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Kind of a key part of the American election setup is the concept of a secret ballot for hopefully obvious reasons. We haven’t gone quite so far as eliminating that, but down in Georgia, Secretary of State Brian Kemp (who was running for governor at the same time as he was overseeing the integrity of the election and also putting in place a bunch of attempts at voter suppression) has doxxed hundreds of thousands (291,164 to be exact) of absentee voters by posting an Excel file on the state’s website listing out the names, addresses and reasons why they voted absentee.

In typical spokesperson Candice Broce fashion (see her previous nonsensical quotes defending her boss), Broce/Kemp denied that there’s anything wrong with this at all. The systems, they are all working perfectly:

When reached, Georgia secretary of state’s press secretary Candice Broce told TechCrunch that all of the data “is clearly designated as public information under state law,” and denied that the data was “confidential or sensitive.”

“State law requires the public availability of voter lists, including names and address of registered voters,” she said in an email.

While it is true that voter name and address info is required to be made available, it is usually not made available in aggregate for anyone to just download without restrictions. And, it’s especially concerning that they released the reasons for voting absentee just a day or so after the election — as people pointed out that this could be quite useful info for criminals looking for who might be away from their homes.

More concerning, of course, is the idea that this could scare off future voters as well who don’t want such info being released in such a manner.

Either way, the idea that the Secretary of State, who kept insisting how wonderful his electronic voting systems were, would then release a giant Excel spreadsheet should again raise questions about the technological skills of whoever set up the system, let alone Kemp for overseeing such a system.

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HSBC confirms US data breach

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  1. HSBC confirms US data breach  Springfield Business Journal

  2. HSBC Confirms Data Breach Of US Customers  Silicon UK
  3. HSBC hit with data breach in the US  Insurance Business

    4. Full coverage

data breach – read more

NSA official: China violating agreement on cyber economic espionage

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  1. NSA official: China violating agreement on cyber economic espionage  The Hill

  2. China violated Obama-Xi cyber pact banning cyber-enabled economic espionage: NSA official  Washington Times
  3. US accuses China of violating an anti-cyber espionage bilateral agreement  Firstpost

    4. Full coverage

china espionage – read more

Get your code in RunCode, the online programming and pwning extravaganza

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Want to flex your coding and hacking skills but can't get to a con? RunCode is for you.

Enlarge / Want to flex your coding and hacking skills but can’t get to a con? RunCode is for you. (credit: Nate Grigg)

Last year, a group of dedicated volunteers launched Codewarz, an online coding “capture the flag” (CTF) contest originally developed as an on-site competition for colleges and training events. Paid for entirely out of their own pockets, the competition included 24 challenges—challenges that could be taken on in one of 14 supported programming and scripting languages. There were more than 1,000 participants in last year’s event, with only one completing all the challenges.

The team behind Codewarz has continued to do onsite events, including a Python workshop held at BSides Augusta this year focused on tackling CTF-style problems. But the open competition is back this weekend—bigger, better, and with a whole new domain. Re-dubbed RunCode, the contest is now backed by a newly formed nonprofit funded by sponsors.

That sponsorship has made it possible to scale the event up—RunCode will have 180 coding challenges, including security-focused ones. And now there are prizes for top competitors, including an Intel NUC kit, Raspberry Pi and Arduino kits, and a one-year VIP subscription to the Hack The Box penetration testing lab.

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