Two 11-year-olds altered election results in hacker convention's replica of U.S. voting system

Two 11-year-oldsmanaged to hack into areplica of Florida's election results website in under 15minutes andchange names and tallies during aconvention of hackers, organizerssaid, stoking concerns about security ahead of nationwide votes.

The boy and girl werethe quickest of 35 children, ages 6 to 17, who all eventually hacked into copies of the websites of six swingstates during the three-day Def Con security convention in Las Vegasover the weekend, the event said on Twitter on Tuesday.

The event was meant to test the strength of U.S. election infrastructure and details of the vulnerabilities would be passed onto the states, it added.

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The National Association of Secretaries of State,who areresponsible for tallying votes,said it welcomed theconvention's efforts. But it said the actual systems used bystates would have additional protections.

"It would be extremely difficult to replicate these systemssince many states utilize unique networks and custom-built databases with new and updated security protocols," the association said.

The hacking demonstration came as concerns swirl about election system vulnerabilities before mid-term state and federal elections.

U.S President Donald Trump's national security team warnedtwo weeks ago that Russia had launched "pervasive" efforts tointerfere in the November polls.

Participants at the convention changed party names and addedas many as 12 billion votes to candidates, the event said.

"Candidate names were changed to Bob Da Builderand Richard Nixon's head,the convention tweeted.

The convention linked to what it said was the Twitteraccount of the winning boy named there as Emmett Brewer fromAustin, Texas.

A screenshot posted on the account showed he had managed to change the name of the winning candidate on the replica Floridawebsite to his own and gave himself billions of votes.

The convention's Voting Villagealso aimed to exposesecurity issues in other systems such as digital poll books and memory-card readers.