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Braun also noted the concern that many voting machines use computer chips made in China, though he acknowledged that the international supply chain of electronics makes foreign sourcing hard to avoid. Still, having voting machines built in other countries opens up election technology to multiple opportunities for exploitation, he said.

“This strikes at the heart of the idea that you’d need thousands of Russians with physical access to the machines to get into them, when in fact, no, you don’t -- you need one Russian to bribe a Chinese manufacturing-plant official, and now all of a sudden they own an entire class of machines nationwide,” Braun said.

“A nation-state actor with resources, expertise and motive, like Russia, could exploit these supply chain security flaws to plant malware into the parts of every machine, and indeed could breach vast segments of U.S. election infrastructure remotely,” the Voting Machine Hacking Village report reads.

Another worrisome discovery: Chinese music files had been downloaded on to one of the voting machines, Braun said.

\"PHOTO:
Ann Hermes/Christian Science Monitor/Getty
PHOTO: Kids work at the lock picking station at r00tz Asylum, a program for kids at DEF CON 24, one of the world's largest hacker conventions in Bally's Hotel & Casino on Aug. 6, 2016 in Las Vegas.
>

Although most of the hardware vulnerabilities hackers previously exposed remain unaddressed, this year’s DEF CON will expand its scope to scrutinize \"end-to-end\" election infrastructure vulnerabilities. In the \"Voting Village,\" hackers will attempt to corrupt other components of the voting process, such as registration databases and election results reporting websites.

“All the vulnerabilities which were discovered last year are fundamental vulnerabilities in the system itself -- vulnerabilities that cannot be fixed without redesigning the whole system, redesigning the hardware,” Harri Hursti, a computer programmer and another co-author of the Voting Village study, told ABC News.

Hursti stressed that making elections fully impenetrable -- by using paper ballots, for instance -- is the best strategy to prevent future election interference. \"White Hat\" hackers also advocate using open-source technology and educating election officials to protect against the \"people problems\" that make systems more susceptible to attack.

For the first time, DEF CON 2018 will feature talks from DHS election officials, alongside cybersecurity experts and programmers.

California Secretary of State Alex Padilla will participate in the conference's keynote panel on Friday. Alejandro Mayorkas, former Deputy Secretary of Homeland Security, will deliver the afternoon keynote.

As Russian election interference remains in the spotlight and midterm elections loom, the event’s organizers have seen a surge in interest -- organizers expect more than 500 election officials to attend their training, which they offer free as a public service. The officials will practice defending voting infrastructure against hackers in real time.

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