WIREDGOV

An NCSC statement following the cyber incidents affecting political parties (12/11/19).

Yesterday (12/11/19) the Labour Party reported to the NCSC that it had suffered a distributed denial of service attack (DDoS) attack.

An NCSC spokesperson yesterday said:

“The NCSC has worked closely with political parties for several years on how to protect and defend against cyber attacks. We met the major parties last week ahead of the General Election.

“In terms of this incident, the Labour Party followed the correct, agreed procedures and notified us swiftly. The NCSC is confident the party took the necessary steps to deal with the attack. The attack was not successful and the incident is now closed.”

Further information

The incident which affected the Labour Party was a Distributed Denial of Service (DDoS) attack. DDoS attacks seek to disrupt web services by overwhelming them with traffic.

DDoS attacks are a common form of attack, used by a very wide range of attackers. Mitigation techniques are available and worked in this case.

The nature of DDoS attacks often makes it difficult to attribute responsibility for them to a particular group.

The mechanics of the UK electoral system does not lend itself to electronic manipulation - voting and counting of ballots are manual processes conducted under the watchful eye of observers.

We have systems in place to defend against electoral fraud at all levels and have seen no successful cyber intervention in UK democratic processes.