The hacking of the Electoral Commission’s databases highlights the way that in the interconnected modern world, ‘warfare’ can be as much about undermining faith in a country’s institutions and disrupting its political processes as anything else.
The Electoral Commission has admitted that ‘hostile actors’ penetrated their systems in August 2021, in a ‘complex cyberattack’ that was only detected in October 2022. In those 14 months, the hackers accessed the details (most, admittedly, openly available) of up to 40 million voters, as well as the commission’s email system.
One former Russian spook from the SVR once admitted to me that ‘MI6, CIA and the rest are the opposition: it’s the FSB who are the enemy’
Was it the Russians? Apparently, the security services have found evidence connecting this to Moscow, but in the absence of any more concrete information it is hard to know how to assess this. The trouble is that these days, the Russians are once again the all-purpose bugbear and we have already heard a queue of former spooks lining up to point the finger.
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