The Colorado Secretary of State’s Office inadvertently posted a spreadsheet to its website with a hidden tab that included voting system passwords.
In a statement to 9NEWS, a spokesperson for the Colorado Secretary of State’s Office said that “the Department is working to remedy this situation where necessary.”
“The Department took immediate action as soon as it was aware of this and informed the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA), which closely monitors and protects the county’s essential security infrastructure,” the spokesperson said.
On Tuesday morning, Colorado Republican Party Vice Chair Hope Scheppelman shared the hidden tab discovery in a mass email, along with an affidavit from someone who claims they had downloaded the Excel file from the Colorado Secretary of State’s website and discovered the hidden tab by simply clicking “unhide.” The name on the affidavit was blacked out in the Republican Party email.
9NEWS left a voicemail with Scheppelman on Tuesday afternoon.
The passwords that were in the hidden tab are known as BIOS passwords and are one part of the security process for Colorado’s voting machines.
They are passwords needed to configure system settings.
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