Politics
Alleged hacks, Japanese language issues plague Florida drivers, Seminole elections office
Florida’s driver’s licenses are allegedly at the mercy of hackers while the Seminole County Supervisor of Elections page is showing Japanese characters on Google search, in an unwelcome post-Labor Day double play exposing major tech security concerns.
Per Dark Web Informer and other sites, the black hat hackers at ShinyHunters have obtained a trove of driver’s licenses, which one theory holds were secured as part of the mammoth Nexus hack and dark web sale of 153 million driver’s licenses nationwide.
A license displayed as part of the database is not current, but that of dead Palm Beach sex trafficker Jeffrey E. Epstein. So the database may or may not be current.
The “ransom” group SLSH is also circulating the data set, according to another source.
The Florida Department of Highway Safety and Motor Vehicles did not answer the phone nor did it respond to emails from Florida Politics Tuesday morning to find out what data was hacked, whether it was current or legacy, or what protections will be given to drivers whose data was exposed.
The Department has until Friday to contact the hacker or the “files,” including Epstein and other past and present Florida motorists, could be released.
Beyond sensitive data being brokered on the dark web, the Seminole County Supervisor of Elections attributes Japanese writing on the first page of Google search results connected to their office to “updates on the website.”
Spokesperson Jennifer Carroll said the office is “going to fix it.”
It is uncertain how quickly the fix will be resolved. Indexing can take days or even weeks to fix.
It is also uncertain why the default language for an American elections website would be in Japanese, or why the search engine language would be changed by routine updates.
We reached out to Secretary of State Cord Byrd for more detail. He is asking his cybersecurity team about what happened.
Expect updates as we find out more on both of these issues.
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