DDoS targets online political leadership ballot

A Distributed Denial of Service attack (DDoS) has disrupted the leadership ballot of Canada’s New Democratic Party (NDP), leading to the party’s conference being delayed and members complaining about being unable to cast ballots via the website.

The CBC reports that Scytl, the company that managed the ballot, has identified that a botnet with over 10,000 compromised IP addresses was used in the attack.

Based on an audit by Price Waterhouse Coopers, it is not believed that the attackers were able to add, subtract, or change any ballots.

Nonetheless, the news highlights the cybersecurity risks of DDoS attacks on conducting a large scale real-time event, such as a ballot, over the internet.