Hackers Breach Russia’s ‘Invulnerable’ Voting System Ahead of State Duma Elections

Russia's Central Election Commission (CEC) disclosed that its highly touted "Invulnerable" voting system, GAS Elections 2.0, had been hacked shortly after its unveiling. In August, CEC head Ella Pamfilova claimed the system was "impossible to hack." However, at a recent CEC meeting, she and Deputy Minister of Digital Development Oleg Kachanov admitted that the platform had faced an unprecedented number of cyberattacks.

Despite this, they insisted that the system remained "maximally secure" and that physical security measures were in place to protect it and polling stations. Shortly after Pamfilova's assurances, hacker group CikLeak claimed to have breached both the CEC's GAS Elections 2.0 infrastructure and Tsifrotekh, a contractor of the system.

The hackers released a wealth of internal company documents, source code, meeting recordings, passwords, and employee correspondence. While CikLeak stated their intention was not to disrupt the voting process but to highlight how easily the system could be manipulated to falsify results, they emphasized that the system was opaque and vulnerable to manipulation.

Independent Russian outlet Important Stories verified the authenticity of the leaked documents and said it would release its own assessment. The new system, introduced earlier this year, replaced the older one in use since the late 1990s. The first federal-level vote using the new system is scheduled for the upcoming State Duma elections.

Pamfilova previously described Russia's electoral system as a world leader in technological sophistication, highlighting features like remote electronic voting and video surveillance.