European Interest

Are Finland’s national elections under cyber attack?

Wikimedia Commons/CC BY-SA 3.0 Author: Arto Alanenpää
Advertising labels for the April 14 parliamentary elections, Helsinki.

Do unknown hackers threaten Finland’s national elections? It seems so.

Ahead of the elections of April 14, the National Bureau of Investigation announced on Wednesday that a web site service related to the elections was subject of a cyber attack during the last weekend.

According to Bloomberg the hackers attempted to provoke a severe interference with telecommunications. The victim of the attempt was Finland’s official elections result service.
The procedure of the elections is safe since Finland has not an electronic voting system and a cyber attack cannot affect the election result. However such an attack could obstruct the access of media to elections results.

“The authorities are prepared for cyber crimes of this kind in connection with elections,” said NBI Cyber Crime Centre Detective Chief Inspector Marko Leponen in a press release on Wednesday reports YLE news. “In general, attacks on public services are rather common, and services of current interest or those that get publicity are often tempting targets,” Leponen added.

The police didn’t identify the hackers.

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