Switzerland offers $ 150,000 to those who manage to hack their e-voting system

The Federal Chancellery informed that a false vote will take place from February 25 to March 24 and invites computer geniuses who wish to exercise their talents to register to this end.

They can "try to manipulate the votes, read the votes, violate the secrecy of the vote and decommission or bypbad the security features that protect both the votes and the data inherent to the securityhe said in a statement.

The amount of the reward will depend on the hackers' intrusion capacity. The $ 50,000 jackpot will be for anyone who manages to handle undetectable votes. Violating the secrecy of the vote will be rewarded by 10,000, while the one who destroys the electronic ballot box will win 5,000.

With this initiative, the Swiss authorities they seek to reconfirm the security of the electronic voting system. Frequently asked for popular referendums and initiatives that are the basis of Swiss democracy, citizens of this country prefer most often vote by mail and more and more by email, even if polling stations are allowed for a few hours.

Electronic voting in Switzerland has been in the testing phase since 2004 in some cantons, which are responsible for the organization of these elections. Since then, a total of 15 cantons have allowed some of their constituents to vote electronically in more than 300 successful events, according to Bern.

Currently, 10 of the 26 cantons of the confederation still offer electronic voting in the trial phase. But at the end of 2018, the government launched a process to end this test phase and "make e-voting the third voting channel". This process will take at least two years.