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Cyberattacks during vote on Russian Constitution originated from US, UK, Ukraine — envoy

The presidential representative noted that cyberattacks targeting critical infrastructure and electoral processes had become a norm in 2020

VIENNA, September 7. /TASS/. Cyberattacks during the Russian nationwide vote on the constitutional amendments were detected from the US, the UK, Ukrainian territory and a number of CIS states, Special Representative of the President of the Russian Federation for International Cooperation in Information Security Andrei Krutskikh told the OSCE conference on cybersecurity Monday.

He noted that cyberattacks targeting critical infrastructure and electoral processes had become a norm in 2020.

"For example, during the vote on the amendments to the Russian Constitution (Jun 25 - July 1 this year), large-scale attacks on the Central Electoral Commission infrastructure and other government bodies of Russia took place. Sources of DDoS attacks of up to 240,000 requests per second were detected on the US, the UK, Ukrainian territory and a number of CIS countries," the presidential representative said.

According to Krutskikh, problems that all countries face in cyberspace have snowballed in 2020. For example, the amount of illegal content disseminated on the web, including terrorism-related materials, keeps growing; destructive actions against states in the cyberspace are becoming a norm.

"Concepts of preventive cyberstrikes, offensive actions in cyberspace, adopted by certain countries, do not exactly inspire optimism," he noted.

The nationwide vote on the amendments to the Russian Constitution took place between June 25 and July 1. The vote lasted for several days in a bid to curb the coronavirus spread. According to the Central Electoral Commission, the amendments were supported by 77.92% of voters, while 21.27% stood against them. The turnout was 67.97%.