Brazil's Jair Bolsonaro sought to hack into voter machines, hacker testifies [View all]

Julia Vargas Jones

By Sofia Cox, Alessandra Castelli, Michael Rios and Julia Vargas Jones, CNN
Published 6:26 PM EDT, Thu August 17, 2023

CNN
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A Brazilian hacker said Thursday that former President Jair Bolsonaro asked him if he could hack into voting machines, according to his testimony to a congressional inquiry set up to investigate Brazil’s election results and the storming of governmental buildings on January 8, 2023.

Walter Delgatti Neto’s told the Joint Parliamentary Commission of Inquiry (CPMI) that during an August 2022 meeting with Bolsonaro, the former president offered to pardon the hacker if he suffered any legal consequences.

Delgatti said Bolsonaro told him to “rest assured that if by chance someone arrests you, I will have the judge arrested,” and that the hacker would “receive a pardon if the arrest was for actions related to the electronic voting machine.”

In the hearing, Delgatti explained to committee members that the idea was for him to build a fake code for voting machines that would allow for a vote intended for one candidate to go to another candidate, as a way to “expose the fragility” of the voting machines.

More:
https://edition.cnn.com/2023/08/17/americas/brazil-hacker-jair-bolsonaro-intl-latam/index.html