DDoS attacks on remote electronic voting systems (DEG) based on blockchain used in the State Duma elections are “off the charts.” заявила глава Центризбиркома Элла Памфилова.
According to her, half of the attacks on the Gosuslugi portal originate from the United States, as well as from Germany, Russia, China, and Ukraine.
Hackers are also attacking the site vybory.gov.ru, Pamfilova said:
«If you look at the distribution by country — 50% of attacks from the USA, from Germany — 25%, from Korea — 20%, from China — 5%».
The Ministry of Digital Development recorded two DDoS attacks during the DEG — one targeted vybory.gov.ru, the other targeted the Gosuslugi site.
“The attacks were planned and organized, indicating an intention to deliberately hinder the normal operation of the services and to block the work of electronic voting services,” — said the Ministry of Digital Development.
The agency stressed that all DDoS attacks were repelled.
The Moscow election monitoring headquarters said the hackers’ actions led to delays in the online-voting monitoring service, causing data to be updated with a delay, but this did not affect their recording on the blockchain.
Last year, during Moscow’s municipal elections, the blockchain system showed failures.
In the current State Duma elections, blockchain-based systems are used in Moscow, Sevastopol, Kursk, Nizhny Novgorod, Yaroslavl, Murmansk and Rostov regions. In the capital, voting is conducted on a platform developed by the city government; in other regions, on the Central Election Commission’s system.
Oleg Artamonov, deputy chairman of the DEG territorial election commission, confirmed the attacks in a conversation with ForkLog:
“They originated from distributed networks (botnets) from territories of different countries, with the power of the attacks reaching up to 20 Mpps — noticeable, but still far below what security mechanisms can handle.”
Earlier, the blockchain system built by Moscow’s Department of Information Technology was used in elections for the Moscow City Duma and for the vote on constitutional amendments. In both cases it failed.
The blockchain system, developed by Rostelecom in collaboration with Waves Enterprise. In 2020, it was tested by 30,000 people, the CEC reported.
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