Switzerland offers bounties to anyone who hacks its e-voting system

Security investigators aspire to rewards of up to 50k Swiss francs

Swiss government announced a bounty of 150K Swiss francs (about $140k USD) for hackers who successfully enter to its electronic voting system, as reported by network security and ethical hacking specialists from the International Institute of Cyber Security.

The Swiss Federal Chancellery announced that a fictitious election will take place between February 25th and March 24th, and has extended the invitation to anyone who wants to demonstrate their hacking capabilities to compromise the e-voting system in Switzerland.

According to specialists in network security, hackers may try to manipulate the counting of votes, view the votes cast, compromise the confidentiality of the vote, or penetrate the security systems of the government during the simulated elections.

The amount of the reward that hackers aspire to will depend on the level of intrusion achieved at each event.

The greatest individual reward offered is 50k francs, which will be awarded to the person who manages to manipulate the counting of votes without being detected by the electronic security systems.

The Swiss authorities hope that this exercise will help to ensure, and even improve, the security measures of this state-of-the-art e-voting system, report network security experts.

Switzerland frequently carries out pubic consultation and voting for the decision making of relevant public affairs, in addition to the election of representatives, so many Swiss citizens resort to remote voting, traditionally by mail, and recently to Through the e-voting.

Electronic voting takes more than 10 years of implementation in Swiss territory at the end of last year, the government launched an initiative to establish online voting as a third option across the country in two years.