Florida election volunteer arrested for allegedly stealing computer access key during training

A Palm Beach County, Fla., election volunteer has been arrested for allegedly stealing a computer access key during a training session.County Sheriff’s Office detectives discovered that sensitive computer equipment was stolen March 19 from the county’s Supervisor of Elections Office during a training session for volunteers assisting with the upcoming election, CBS12 reported on Sunday.
Detectives said that John Panicci allegedly took an encrypted access key from a voter registration terminal at the session.
Officials said the key was configured only for training databases, but authorities have raised concerns about a person with technical expertise possibly reverse engineering the encryption, then using the key in a live voter registration kiosk for malicious purposes.
Detectives on Saturday executed the search warrant at Panicci’s residence, where he was taken into custody without incident. Investigators said they recovered the stolen key during the search, along with many electronic and digital storage devices.
Panicci was booked at the county jail on counts of theft and taking and damaging an electronic device. Authorities did not say whether any voter data was compromised, but noted that the investigation is ongoing.

Read Full Article: https://justthenews.com/nation/crime/florida-election-volunteer-arrested-allegedly-stealing-computer-access-key-during?utm_source=justthenews.com&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=external-news-aggregators