An expert is concerned that as the midterm elections near, attempts to sabotage the procedures via distributed denial of service (DDoS) attacks will increase.
A DDoS attack is a type of cyberattack in which numerous computer systems that have been compromised swarm and attack a target (be it a server, website, or other similar network), causing a “denial of service” for users of the resource.
Michael McNerney, a cyber threat intelligence product manager at NETSCOUT, believes that these sorts of cyberattacks could rear their ugly heads come the midterm elections this week.
“DDoS attacks aimed at election infrastructure such as voter databases can prevent officials from accessing crucial information about who is qualified to vote,” McNerney explained to Forbes. “Similarly, DDoS attacks against election websites can prevent accurate and timely results from being shared with the public, undermining credibility and sewing confusion.”
McNerney’s concerns are not misplaced – DDoS attacks have already hit several US systems in recent months. In September, a DDoS attack took down California Democratic congressional candidate Bryan Caforio’s website during the primaries. Also this year, the Knox County election commission website was flooded by DDoS attempts just as the primary election results were being announced. Not only did the attack prevent the results from being posted on the website, the attacks also allowed another separate data breach to slip through, affecting a county server.
For McNerney, DDoS attacks should be considered another form of information warfare.
“While a great deal of recent focus has been on disinformation campaigns, DDoS is about denial of information, which can be just as - if not more - dangerous,” he remarked.
“An actual DDoS attack could not only cause confusion about the results of an election, it could also potentially undermine public faith in our entire democratic system.”
McNerney gave a hypothetical scenario in which a massive DDoS attack hit the state of California, which has 53 congressional districts. Such an assault would prevent the entire country from knowing which party would sit in Congress.
“In highly anticipated global events like influential US or major world power elections, the implications grow higher for broader global impact,” the security expert warned.
