January 9, 2024 at 10:56AM
Ukraine and Germany are accused of launching a cyberattack to disrupt a Bangladesh national election app. The app, used to provide election updates and candidate data, is impacted by slow performance. Although the exact nature of the attack is not specified, it’s suspected to be caused by botnets from Ukraine and Germany, with efforts ongoing to resolve the issue.
Based on the meeting notes, the key takeaways are:
1. Ukraine and Germany have been accused of waging a cyberattack to crash the Smart Election Management BD app used in the past weekend’s national election in Bangladesh.
2. The official secretary of the Bangladesh Election Commission, Mohammed Jahangir Alam, stated that the app is functioning slowly but still working, and blamed Ukraine and Germany for the cyber disruption.
3. The app is not used for voting but allows Bangladeshi citizens to stay updated on the elections, access historical and current data on electoral candidates and associate parties, and provides information on voter turnout.
4. Cloudflare researchers suggested that botnets operating within the borders of Ukraine and Germany could have been the cause of the issue, although targeted distributed denial-of-service (DDoS) attacks were not ruled out as the cause.
5. Despite attempts to seek comment and details on the issue, Cloudflare had not responded to Dark Reading’s request for information.
Overall, the meeting notes highlight the allegations of a cyberattack affecting an app used in the national election in Bangladesh and the ongoing efforts to address the issue. They also point to a broader trend of increasing influence efforts by threat actors in the context of national elections across several nations.