Poroshenko accuses Russia of cyber attacks on the Central Election Commission of Ukraine
The Russian Federation carried out DdoS attacks on the Central Election Commission (CEC) on February 24 and 25, said Ukrainian President Petro Poroshenko on Tuesday during a meeting with representatives of the IT sector in Kyiv, Interfax Ukraine reported.
“The Ukrainian National Security and Defense Council has developed protection mechanisms together with department for information security of the Security Service of Ukraine, the Cyber Security Police of the CEC jointly with our American partners. Because yesterday and the day before yesterday the Russian Federation carried out DDoS attacks,” Poroshenko said.
In January, the Ukrainian Cyber Police announced that there have been constant attacks on the CEC servers and the computers of the commission members.
In the summer of 2018, Mykhaylo Okhendovsky, the former head of the Central Election Commission, complained that the CEC needs modern equipment to protect elections from hackers, but cannot get the Verkhovna Rada to listen. After the appointment of the new CEC in November 2018, the Rada allocated 49.66 million hryvnia to protect the information resources of the commission. At the same time, the OSCE project coordinator in Ukraine provided equipment and software to the Central Election Commission to enhance protection against cyber-attacks.
On May 22, 2014, there was an attack on the information resources of the CEC before the presidential elections. The SBU stated that they were trying to plant a computer virus, which was supposed to destroy the entire database on the CEC server on the election day, May 25.