Ukraine claims cyberattacks on Russian election systems; Moscow confirms disruptions therecord.media/ukraine-c…

Ukraine’s military intelligence agency (HUR) said on Sunday it hacked Russia’s Central Election Commission and other government services in response to voting in occupied Ukrainian regions. The operation coincided with Russia’s “unified voting day,” when regional and local elections are held simultaneously across the country. This year, ballots were also cast in Crimea and other occupied parts of Ukraine. Kyiv and its allies say those elections are illegal.

HUR said its distributed denial-of-service (DDoS) attack targeted the servers of the CEC, Russia’s electronic voting system, the state services portal Gosuslugi and core routers of state-run telecoms provider Rostelecom. DDoS incidents flood servers with traffic with the intention of knocking them offline. “The goal was to disrupt online voting, particularly in occupied Ukrainian regions,” a HUR spokesperson said, adding that the attacks temporarily paralyzed digital services and left many Russians unable to vote electronically.