Vladimir Putin led Russia is accused of interfering in the elections of Mexico after a political party from the said region announced publicly that its website was hacked by state-funded actors.
The National Action Party (PAN-Partido Accion Nacional in Spanish) had its website shut down during the final televised debate in early June this year. A spokesperson from Ricardo Araya’s party released a press statement yesterday that after an investigation by the law enforcement it was revealed that the PAN website was hit by a DDoS attack as over 185,000 visits were registered within 15 minutes coming from different places located in China and Russia.
Mexican media said that some state-funded hackers could have launched the attack to sabotage the elections and the suspicion goes strongly on Putin’s government.
PAN website was meant to publish sensitive documents regarding a contract made between Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador and a person whose name has been withheld due to reasons.
Cyber experts claim that the Distributed denial of attack was launched in order to prevent the Mexican populace from logging onto the website to view the documents as it could influence the results of elections to be held on July 1st, 2018.
In December last year, United States FBI and the National Security adviser Gen HR McMaster issued a warning that Russia could be meddling in the Mexican election to favor a specific candidate. They already proved their digital stance by interfering in US 2016 Polls which went in favor of Donald Trump.
Note- Even though a lot of polling stations in Mexico will go for a paper ballot, digital systems will be used to tally and transmit the results.
Ron Bush, the VP of cybersecurity company Mandiant suggests that a slight disruption could cause doubt and distrust in the elections held in Mexico. And so some rogue nations could use this ploy to negatively affect the political landscape of Mexico to the core.
