DDoS attacks on the Russian e-government infrastructure were successfully repelled and did not affect the quality of functioning of remote electronic voting services, according to the Ministry of Digital Development and Mass Communications of the Russian Federation cited by Izvestia.
On September 17, the voting began in all regions of the Russian Federation. It is specified that this year, the State Duma elections will be held for the first time in a new three-day format with September 19 as the main voting day and September 17 and 18 as additional ones.
It is reported that since 8.00 am Moscow time, that is since the start of the online voting services, two DDoS attacks have been recorded in Russia. The first attack of 40 gigabits was committed at 10.36 am. More than 50 per cent of mass requests to the services were generated from IP addresses registered in the United States and over 25 per cent, from IP addresses registered in Germany.
The second DDoS attack was launched at 10.45 am Moscow time and was aimed at blocking access to the services of the identification and authentication system used for authorization on the public services portal, including access to online voting services. The attack power exceeded 73 gigabits and also more than 50 per cent of requests were made from IP addresses from the United States, 25 per cent, from German IP addresses, and about 5 per cent from Ukrainian ones.
However, Russian information security tools successfully coped with technically prepared, narrowly targeted DDoS attacks. There was no degradation and interruptions in ensuring the functioning of the voting services for the citizens of the country and the data of the portal users are safely protected.
Ru-Main, 17.09.2021
