NAN-F-14
Hackers
London, April 12, 2017 (dpa/NAN) Foreign hackers could have caused a website to crash during final voter registration for last year’s Brexit referendum, British lawmakers reported on Wednesday.
The government had blamed system overload for the problem,
After the voter registration website crashed in the final two hours last June, the government extended the deadline by 48 hours and said “huge demand” had caused a system overload.
But a parliamentary committee on public administration said it could not “rule out the possibility that there was foreign interference in the EU referendum caused by a Distributed Denial of Service (DDOS) attack using botnets.”
Although the committee said it had no direct evidence, it considers that it is important to be aware of the potential for foreign interference in elections or referendums, adding that the crash had “indications of being a DDOS attack.”
Members said that if such an attack did occur, the lawmakers did not believe it had “any material effect” on the result of the EU referendum, in which 52 per cent voted for Brexit.
The committee noted that U.S. and British understanding of cyber security was “predominantly technical and computer-network based, while Russia and China use a cognitive approach based on understanding of mass psychology and of how to exploit individuals.”
Members urged the government to develop “permanent machinery for monitoring cyber activity in respect of elections and referendums,” promote cyber security and make contingency plans for responding to any attacks during elections. (dpa/NAN)
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Edited by Celine-Damilola Oyewole/Sadiya Hamza