Political Party's Leadership Election Hit By DDoS Attack 100
New submitter lyran74 writes "Saturday's electronic leadership vote for Canada's New Democratic Party was plagued by delays caused by a botnet DDoS attack, coming from over 10,000 machines. Details are still scarce, but Scytl, who provided electronic voting services, will have to build more robust systems in the future in anticipation of such attacks. Party and company officials say an audit proved the systems and integrity of the vote were not compromised."
No (Score:2, Interesting)
Whoever did this is a hero, for demonstrating that the electronic voting process was broken, and in particular for doing a proof of concept attack on a "party leadership" election which doesn't really matter very much.
Tip of the Scummy Iceberg (Score:3, Interesting)
Believe it or not, despite this being a big political scandal, there is an even bigger one unfolding in Canada. This other one could make Watergate look minor. Actual Watergate criminals have expressed shock at how big RoboCon could be.
Some group conspired during the last Canadian general election to place (hundreds of?) thousands of misleading and/or harrassing phone calls to members of the Liberals and NDP predominantly, to suppress their votes. The Conservative Party was the benefactor of this plot, obtaining a majority government in our Parliament, giving the Prime Minister nearly unchecked power for 5 years. It's been calculated by a professor and independent researcher, LaRue, from Quebec [unfuckwithable.ca] (now living Stateside), that the Robocalls may have affected the outcome in as many as 18 ridings (12 gave the Conservatives a majority).
I've spoken with LaRue, and I trust his findings. His other unreleased allegations are also huge. I'm not exaggerating. I think he's ahead of the RCMP and Elections Canada in their own respective investigations.
Re:Make it longer (Score:4, Interesting)
"Until you actually know who's running, especially in each round, you can't vote effectively in advance. Some people did, not being NDP I'm not sure exactly how that process worked, but the idea was to see how it worked with people voting real time."
Advance voting was done via preferential ballot. You rank everyone in order of preference. If your first place candidate gets eliminated, your vote shifts to the next person still in the running.
It turns out that 85% of the votes cast were advanced ballots, so the people logging in to vote round round by round or who voted in person at the convention had a very limited ability to change the outcome.
Re:What makes it really interesting... (Score:5, Interesting)
It would seem to me that the current Canadian government is one of the most corrupt in the western hemisphere at the moment.
As a proud Canadian, normally I would be outraged by a comment like that. Unfortunately, with what the Conservative party has done (manipulating the previous election) and what Harper has been doing (the list is so damn long...), I find myself entirely unable to argue against that claim... It's disgusting that I can't argue against it...