Hackers from around the world convened in a small conference room in Las Vegas on Friday to challenge a new online voting platform and identify potential digital vulnerabilities in the next generation of election systems.

The platform, named Secure Internet Voting (SIV), is developed by a U.S.-based company of the same name. It allows people to vote using their phones or computers and is already being tested in small pilot programs across the United States.

However, widespread adoption of this technology faces significant challenges. Most states remain hesitant to implement online voting due to security concerns, preferring paper ballots that can be audited.

“There are many who believe that secure internet voting is impossible,” said SIV founder David Ernst at the conference. “We believe that modern tools and technologies can make it extremely secure, potentially even more so than current paper-based systems.”

SIV has already been used at the party level, including in a primary election where Republican Celeste Maloy was chosen as a congressional candidate. She went on to win the seat in Utah’s 2nd congressional district in November 2023.

With the upcoming presidential and congressional elections, concerns over voting security are heightened, particularly with the threat of foreign cyberattacks. U.S. national security officials have warned that Russia and Iran are already targeting voters through online influence campaigns. In the 2016 and 2020 election cycles, Russian hackers attempted to breach election offices and probed several voting machine companies.

To ensure the security of their system, the SIV team has offered $10,000 in prize money to any hackers who can successfully identify flaws.

This event is part of the DEF CON Hacking Conference, which gathers thousands of cybersecurity experts in Nevada each year. It has been organized by DEF CON’s election security group, “Voting Village.” According to Voting Village founder Harri Hursti, while the technology shows potential, widespread implementation of online voting may still be decades away.

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