Hackers May Have DDoS'ed Brexit Vote Site: Report

A report by a UK parliamentary Public Administration Committee on Lessons learned from the EU Referendum says foreign cyberattackers may be responsible for the Brexit voter registration website crash on June 7, 2016, BBC News reports. The committee said the crash "may have been caused by a DDoS (distributed denial of service attack) using botnets" but adds this conclusion is from "circumstantial" evidence only.

This theory is not supported by the Cabinet Office whose report cites "a spike in users" as the reason behind the freeze just before the EU referendum.

"There is no evidence to suggest malign intervention. We conducted a full review into the outage and have applied the lessons learned," the Cabinet Office report said.

Cybersecurity experts are skeptical, too, and one suggested checking traffic reports prior to the crash to ascertain whether a botnet was involved.

The panel has asked for a new Cyber Security Center to monitor future incidents, noting that Russia and China use cyber to influence public opinion.

Read details here.