DDoS Attack Knocks Czech Election Sites Offline

Two websites used to present the Czech Republic’s parliamentary election results were knocked offline after a DDoS attack last Saturday afternoon.

According to the Czech Statistical Office (CSU) the vote count was not affected, in a statement on their website explaining, “During the processing, there was a targeted DDoS attack aimed at the infrastructure of the O2 company used for elections. As a result, servers volby.cz and volbyhned.cz had been temporarily partly inaccessible. The attack did not in any way affect either the infrastructure used for the transmission of election results to the CSU headquarters or the independent data processing.”

DDoS attacks by nature are one of the most difficult attacks to defend against. One route for mitigation is to prevent the establishment of Botnets in the first place. This requires a more malware-aware public with better computer-hygiene standards. Once a botnet is invoked, organizations should isolate the malware responsible and get it removed – before any damage occurs. Learn more about System Hardening & Vulnerability Management.

It’s unclear if the attacks were launched in response to the election results. The anti-establishment ANO party’s billionaire populist Andrej Babis won the largest share of the vote at nearly 30%. The sites are now back up and running, but DDoS attacks can have a serious impact on the democratic process. Just look at the hack that compromised the DNC just ahead of the 2016 US presidential election.

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