Hacker Arrested And Jailed After Exposing Flaws In Election Website
By Claire Bernish
ActivistPost.com
MAY 10, 2016
A hacker in Florida exposed security vulnerabilities in one county’s elections web domains so officials could fix the problem — but, instead, he ended up behind bars.
Hacker, David Michael Levin, owner of Vanguard Cybersecurity, was arrested on Wednesday after the Florida Department of Law Enforcement received a referral from the Lee County Sheriff’s Office after his apparently misguided attempt to help prevent election fraud by pointing out online vulnerabilities.
After spending six hours in jail, where he was held on $15,000 bond, Levin now faces three counts of gaining unauthorized access to a computer, network, or electronic instrument — despite the fact he had not only been doing his job, but also alerted the county to a potentially serious security concern.
To hack the Lee County Elections Office and the Division of Elections in Tallahassee, Levin performed Structured Query Language (SQL) injection attacks — which he documented on video and later uploaded to YouTube. According to the somewhat redacted police report, Levin’s associate, Daniel Sinclair, sent a security report about the SQL vulnerability — including details of the security flaw and a screenshot — to “an employee within the Department of State, Division of Elections.”
That employee then forwarded all the information to Special Agent Christopher Tissot, and the investigation began.
Though, superficially, the case appears to be one of an unwelcome security breach despite that it was attempted for otherwise laudable purposes. But some aspects of what led to Levin’s arrest deserve further consideration.
The Rest…HERE
