Traditionally, before major political events in Ukraine, numerous internet resources, websites of various political parties controlled by one political force or another, and even independent news agencies are subjected to massive hacker attacks. This is especially true during elections, during which many electoral participants deliberately use all means to destroy their opponents, including through information. Hacker attacks, which have recently been increasingly targeting undesirable internet resources, are no exception. In addition, the Central Election Commission's electronic systems, which are designed to ensure its operation during the pre-election period, election day, and the vote count, as well as other state electronic servers, databases, and other such systems, are also subject to DDoS attacks.
By a strange coincidence, the most scandalous materials published before the attacks on job-sbu.org were:
1. Head of the Internet Party of Ukraine, Dmitry Golubov from Odessa: a cybercriminal is coming to power
2. Sale of weapons from the State Concern UkrOboronProm
Recently, Oleksiy Kocherev, an IT specialist and member of the Ukraine – Forward! political party, which is also participating in the election campaign, wrote on his Facebook page about a possible DDoS attack on the video surveillance systems scheduled to be installed at Ukrainian polling stations on the day of the upcoming Verkhovna Rada elections. According to him, hackers are planning to attack the system with the aim of undermining the transparency of the electoral process. In other words, on election day, the video surveillance cameras installed at polling stations, whose video feed will be broadcast on the Central Election Commission website, may be unavailable for viewing, significantly increasing the risk of electoral disruption at these polling stations.
Hackers aren't forgetting the official websites of political parties either. Throughout the election process, the websites of many political parties were repeatedly subjected to hacker attacks, but in recent days, the number of such attacks has increased significantly. Hackers are sparing no effort or time to take down websites with massive DDoS attacks. This is not surprising, as serious people pay serious money for serious work. Hacker attacks are punishable by law and therefore quite expensive, but the moneybags spare no expense to gain power or install their protégés there, because the investment will ultimately pay off a hundredfold. While certain individuals are hiring specialists to carry out such orders, it's clear that not everyone can afford it, which speaks volumes about the influence of those ordering hacker attacks.
Information warfare has long ceased to be a mere adjunct to political games. Today, so much depends on it, that political strategists working for political forces increasingly prefer to focus on it. In addition to campaign promises, catchy slogans, and other political advertising, as well as the creation of compromising materials on various politicians, election participants, and ordinary and lesser party and movement members and leaders, considerable attention is paid to using various methods to silence opponents through information. One such method is hacker attacks. Those who successfully employ the above-mentioned methods have a greater chance of winning and achieving good results in the elections.
Based on all of the above, even the average internet user, accustomed to such phenomena as many political websites and online publications simply going down during the election period, understands that these resources were downed due to hacker attacks. This means they are inconvenient for some, as their pages may expose certain political figures, their machinations, and so on. The website job-sbu.org, which honestly and unvarnishedly reports on the activities of political figures, is no exception. The resource is still under DDoS attack. Therefore, someone benefits from users losing access to the information published on the site during the period leading up to the country's elections.
Those seeking to artificially boost their ratings often exploit the opportunity to temporarily take a website out of the spotlight. In other words, some political forces may stage hacker attacks on their own websites not only to appear as victims of dishonest competitors in the eyes of their voters, but also to demonstrate to voters that the party or candidate who owns or represents the attacked website is a powerful political figure whose rise to power is feared by "presumptuous oligarchs." This is also a good PR move and often yields positive results.
What is a DDoS attack? It's a massive attack on an internet resource from a very large number of devices simultaneously. This means that a huge number of requests are constantly being received from many computers, which, at a minimum, hinders the website's operation, as the system can't process so much data simultaneously. Often, the computers used for DDoS attacks are already infected with viruses and have likely been used in multiple attacks. In the best-case scenario, websites become extremely slow, taking a long time to load pages and necessary information—in other words, they simply freeze. Often, the website crashes completely, and ordinary internet users simply lose access to it. Sometimes, in extreme cases, hackers can gain control of the website. However, this is only possible if the system suffers a serious failure, and hackers gain access to sensitive information, such as program code or part of it.
DDoS attacks are perhaps the simplest and most convenient for hackers, but they require, at a minimum, a considerable amount of equipment and, of course, the people who handle them. Naturally, all this costs money, and quite a bit of it, which means the more massive the DDoS attack, the more serious its perpetrator. Typically, most such attacks are associated with oligarchy, which "wings" certain political forces that must, by any means necessary, gain or remain in power.
Based on previous years' experience, the absolute peak of attacks occurs on election day. DDoS attacks target official websites, news agencies, and other online resources of election participants. Given the current political climate and the particularly intense internal rivalry between the front-runners, a similar situation is expected next Sunday. Furthermore, it's unclear what to expect from electronic systems, including the Electoral Commission, and whether they will be able to withstand potential attacks from interested parties.
All this suggests that the more serious the competition between candidates, the more intense the election campaign, and the closer it gets to its conclusion, the more dirty tricks are employed by individual participants. The goal is to achieve the desired results, so, unfortunately, fair and transparent elections in our country are currently out of reach.
Anti-corruption information and analytical portal job-sbu.org
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