The UK’s democratic process and its institutions remain a target for hostile actors online says the electoral commission as it says it has been the subject of a complex cyber-attack, it has announced today, hig
The incident was identified in October 2022 after suspicious activity was detected on the regulator’s systems.
It became clear that hostile actors had first accessed the systems in August 2021. The Commission has since worked with external security experts and the National Cyber Security Centre (NCSC) to investigate and secure its systems.
Shaun McNally, the Electoral Commission Chief Executive, said:
“The UK’s democratic process is significantly dispersed and key aspects of it remain based on paper documentation and counting. This means it would be very hard to use a cyber-attack to influence the process. Nevertheless, the successful attack on the Electoral Commission highlights that organisations involved in elections remain a target, and need to remain vigilant to the risks to processes around our elections.
“We regret that sufficient protections were not in place to prevent this cyber-attack. Since identifying it we have taken significant steps, with the support of specialists, to improve the security, resilience, and reliability of our IT systems.”
As part of the attack, hostile actors were able to access reference copies of the electoral registers, held by the Commission for research purposes and to enable permissibility checks on political donations. The registers held at the time of the cyber-attack include the name and address of anyone in the UK who was registered to vote between 2014 and 2022, as well as the names of those registered as overseas voters. The registers did not include the details of those registered anonymously. The Commission’s email system was also accessible during the attack.
Shaun McNally continued:
“We know which systems were accessible to the hostile actors, but are not able to know conclusively what files may or may not have been accessed.
“While the data contained in the electoral registers is limited, and much of it is already in the public domain, we understand the concern that may have been caused by the registers potentially being accessed and apologise to those affected.”
Electoral registers are held and maintained by individual Electoral Registration Officers for each local authority area, but the Commission is one of a number of organisations which has copies to support it in fulfilling its role in the democratic process.
In line with requirements under the law, the Commission notified the Information Commissioner’s Office (ICO) within 72 hours of identifying that data on its systems may have been accessed, and has today published a formal notification. The ICO is currently investigating the incident.
