MOSCOW, March 15. /TASS/. About 10,500 attacks on remote electronic voting resources have been blocked since the voting in the Russian presidential election began, the head of the Central Election Commission, Ella Pamfilova, has said.
"Since the voting began about 10,500 thousand attacks on remote electronic voting resources have been blocked. The main attacks were against the voting portal itself. They are also trying to break into the remote voting monitoring portal. The system copes with the attacks well. As they say, the enemy will not pass," she said during the CEC meeting.
Pamfilova added that they were committed "not by some self-styled anarchist hackers," but by very well-prepared "representatives of certain, very serious Western structures." "We will be able to cope this time, too," Pamfilova said confidently.
Once again, she noted that the CEC "has already experienced a very serious DDoS attack on the technical video surveillance portal."
"This attack resulted in short-term inaccessibility for some users. Prompt decisions were taken and the attack was neutralized. Accessibility to the service is now one hundred percent. The operability was fully restored. The videos are being recorded and archived normally," Pamfilova said.
She also recalled that she had warned about the risk of such a scenario back in 2021, when video surveillance was transferred to a special portal in anticipation of all sorts of threats.
"Our pro-Western liberals were giggling then. Their giggling was in vain. We can see this now. Now I will not tell you everything, but when the election is over, we will tell you a lot of things: what, who and why was behind this and that and what they were trying to do," Pamfilova promised.
The Russian Federation Council, or upper house of parliament, officially designated March 17, 2024 as the day of the presidential election. The Russian Central Election Commission (CEC) then announced that voting will take place over three days on March 15-17. Four candidates vie for the top office, namely New People party nominee Vladislav Davankov; self-nominated candidate and incumbent President Vladimir Putin; Liberal Democratic Party of Russia (LDPR) nominee Leonid Slutsky; and Communist Party of the Russian Federation (CPRF) nominee Nikolay Kharitonov.