Cybersecurity Expert on Fraud Claims and Voting Safeguards in Venezuela’s Presidential Election - Venezuelanalysis<https://venezuelanalysis.com/analysis/cybersecurity-expert-on-fraud-claims-and-voting-safeguards-in-venezuelas-presidential-election/>
To address some of the questions people are asking on the street and on social media from a technical perspective, we [Venezuelanalysis] consulted Professor Víctor Theoktisto. He is a tenured professor in the Department of Computing and Information Technology at Simón Bolívar University (USB), and was part of a team of expert auditors from the university who were called upon by the CNE in 2021 and 2024 to review and provide their opinion on the Venezuelan electoral system. They studied the system in depth and prepared reports with recommendations.... Regarding the National Electoral Council website, Theoktisto explains that, days before the elections, the site received denial of service attacks (DDoS), where an attacker coordinates hundreds or thousands of computers on the internet to send traffic and requests to a specific address. This overwhelms the website trying to handle all the requests, making it impossible for legitimate users to access the site, resulting in error messages. Theoktisto argued that the CNE website received several types of DDoS attacks (there are about 25 different types of DDoS attacks in total), “at a volume that we simply cannot combat in the country.” He also mentioned that some of the attackers were in Venezuela.... “We expected the attack, but not on such a massive scale,” he stated. The professor believes that “a governmental actor is indispensable,” meaning a hostile government was involved in the attack. Alternatively, several private bot services might have been hired to conduct this attack against the CNE website. In response to these attacks, the CNE has decided to take down or shut down its website entirely. This has prevented, among other things, the CNE from publishing results by polling station. We asked why the CNE has not considered publishing these results through other means (for example, distributing a spreadsheet with the results to journalists and media, electronically signed to ensure its authenticity), but Professor Theoktisto said he does not know the reasons. _._,_._,_ -=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=- Groups.io Links: You receive all messages sent to this group. View/Reply Online (#32041): https://groups.io/g/marxmail/message/32041 Mute This Topic: https://groups.io/mt/108281693/21656 -=-=- POSTING RULES & NOTES #1 YOU MUST clip all extraneous text when replying to a message. #2 This mail-list, like most, is publicly & permanently archived. #3 Subscribe and post under an alias if #2 is a concern. #4 Do not exceed five posts a day. -=-=- Group Owner: [email protected] Unsubscribe: https://groups.io/g/marxmail/leave/8674936/21656/1316126222/xyzzy [[email protected]] -=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-
