Ukraine’s election website hacked

Ukraine’s election commission website has been attacked by hackers on the eve of the country’s parliamentary polls.

According to Ukrainian officials, the website came under cyber attack on Saturday, just one day before Ukraine is set to hold general elections.

“There is a DDoS attack on the commission’s site,” said the Ukrainian government information security service.

A distributed denial-of-service (DDoS) attack slows down or disables a website by flooding it with communications requests.

The security service labeled the attack as “predictable” and went on to say that the website’s design insures that it could not be completely taken down and that it is currently completely functional. 

“If a site runs slowly, that doesn’t mean it has been destroyed by hackers,” the statement added.

As for reports that the site was in control of hackers, Markiyan Lubkivskyy, an adviser to the Ukrainian Security Service said, “Any statements regarding the alleged successful unauthorized intrusions into the cyber space of the Central Election Commission or the elements of the elections systems do not correspond to the facts. Hackers are controlling nothing.”

Ukraine’s snap elections were called in August as President Petro Poroshenko came under pressure to purge the parliament of lawmakers allegedly tied to the overthrown government of Viktor Yanukovych.

As many as 4.6 million Ukrainians are eligible to take part in the parliamentary elections.

The leaders of the breakaway eastern regions of Donetsk and Lugansk have refused to allow the polls to be held in territories under their control, with a population of almost three million.

Ukraine’s mainly Russian-speaking regions in the east have been the scene of deadly clashes between pro-Russia protesters and the Ukrainian army since the government in Kiev launched military operations in mid-April in a bid to crush the protests.

SRK/NN/SS