MOSCOW, September 17. /TASS/. Cyberattacks from overseas haven’t affected the performance of the electronic voting system in Moscow. The system registered 329 attacks during the first hours of balloting, and 70% of them came from the United States, Head of the Moscow Department of Territorial Management and Smart Projects Artyom Kostyrko said.
"Specialists from the Department of Information Technologies, responsible for the operability of the remote electronic voting system, have registered 329 computer attacks in the first 2.5 hours of operation. Seventy percent of the attacks have been carried out through IP addresses from the United States, while 23% came from Iran, and 5% emanated from Germany," Kostyrko said. Cyprus, the Netherlands, Poland and Russia are also in the list of the attackers.
As the press service of the Moscow Department of Information Technologies (DIT) specified, the attempts to destabilize the voting system didn’t impede its work. The recording of Muscovites’ ballots in blockchain has been going smoothly all this time. "There is increased activity on computer incidents and attacks in the Russian segment of the Internet. It is possible that VPN connections are being used from foreign sources that are "landed" on communication nodes in Russia," the press service added.
Kostyrko pointed out that Moscow’s electronic voting system has been used since 2019. "During this time, we’ve taken quite a few lumps. The system works in efficient and reliable ways. It has been proven by numerous tests and checks by hackers. We are confident in its reliability and stability," he said.
The performance of the online voting system has been constantly monitored by IT specialists and members of the election commissions for remote electronic voting. All balloting actions recorded in blockchain are also written on paper. The information in encrypted form is printed on special printers.
Online voting began in Moscow on September 17 at 8 am (Moscow time), and it will end at 8 pm on September 19. Muscovites are able to cast their ballots in the State Duma elections, the Moscow City Duma and the elections for municipal lawmakers in the Shchukino district. During the first four hours of voting, Muscovites have already cast more than 500,000 votes online.