Days before Russia’s State Duma elections, hackers say they accessed the election commission’s IT systems and downloaded server configurations and internal documents

Days before the Russian State Duma elections, which take place from September 18-20, hackers claimed to have infiltrated the IT systems of the Central Election Commission and the Vybory 2.0 automated election system developers. The hackers, known as CikLeak, reportedly downloaded internal documents, server configurations, passwords, and employee communications.

They provided the stolen material to investigative outlet IStories, which confirmed the documents' authenticity. IStories is now conducting an investigation into how Russia's electoral system functions based on the leaked data. The hackers reached out to Alexey Gusev, the head of Tsifrotekh, a Rostelecom subsidiary whose infrastructure was compromised.

However, Gusev was unaware of the breach. The Central Election Commission's head, Ella Pamfilova, had previously stated in August that the Vybory system was unhackable. Following the breach report, the commission revealed that they had analyzed vulnerabilities in both the Vybory system and the video monitoring system. Pamfilova labeled the video monitoring and live streaming service as the "weak link" in the overall system.

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