There is some serious BS going on here.
I have been involved with DEF CON for almost 20 years and I have never heard of this “Molly Hall”.
There are very few people, if any, that would be considered a spokesperson for DEF CON. No one involved with it would ever make the claim that modifying a fake version of a website was a news worthy event.
I am sure that they set up some sites for the kids to hack into and change. I’m also sure that they were set up with known vulnerabilities so the kids could find them and take advantage of them. And they were set up to look like election related sites in order to demonstrate the potential impact of what such vulnerabilities could lead to. That all sounds very much inkine with what they would teach at the “roots asylum” (kids workshops) portion of the conference.
But this story is someone who is taking advantage of the lack of knowledge of the press (go figure?) and pretending to be an authority showing something significant.
The Cybersecurity 202: Def Con hackers couldn’t crack a mock voter database. It’s a rare bright spot for election security.