Cyber attacks designed to undermine democratic elections are becoming the new norm around the world.
The most recent example comes from Mexico, which has a Presidential election on July 1, 2018.
But who did it? Let's just say there is a long list of suspects.
One of the campaign websites got hit with a DDoS attack during a presidential debate, right after that candidate held up a sign with the web address and told viewers the site had documents that proved the other candidate was corrupt.
"PAN secretary Damian Zepeda later suggested that front-running leftist candidate Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador (AMLO) was behind the attack," reports Security Week.
However, "PAN later claimed that the site had been hit by 185,000 visits in 15 minutes, "with the attacks coming mainly from Russia and China." Lopez Obrador denied any involvement in the attack, and laughed off any suggestion of ties with Russia by calling himself 'Andres Manuelovich'."
This type of cyber attack is particularly difficult to attribute. SC Magaizine has that part of the story: “In the case of DDOS attacks, point of origin for the attack traffic is of little value in determining the sponsors of attacks, as the attacks emanate from systems that have been opportunistically compromised and forced to disrupt targeted sites,” said John Hultquist, director of intelligence analysis at FireEye. “Historically, politically motivated DDOS attacks have been carried out through criminal intermediaries who offer services in the underground.”
Related: The WWE, an Election and a DDoS Attack is a fascinating story and so is a research project where a college professors says, "I Hacked Voting Machines and so Can the Russians."