A complex Distributed Denial of Service (DDoS) attack hit
the UK Labour Party’s server infrastructure, but failed to compromise any
system or to steal any data.
The Labor Party’s executive director of elections, Niall
Sookoo, said that their security systems identified a large-scale attack designed
to take the entire system offline. Fortunately, the server managed to deal with
the attack.
“We have experienced a sophisticated and large-scale
cyber-attack on Labour digital platforms. We took swift action and these
attempts failed due to our robust security systems,” said Sookoo, according to
a BBC report.
“The integrity of all our platforms was maintained and we are confident that no
data breach occurred.”
The last part of the statement is essential because
that’s usually the goal of DDOS attackers. Organizations fear a denial of
service attack will disrupt their online presence, and that’s certainly
possible. Studies show that, 9 times out of 10, the cybercriminals are using
such attacks to mask other types of intrusions leveraged against organizations
to steal data by taking advantage of previously undiscovered vulnerabilities.
An inside source from the party told the BBC that the
DDOS originated from Russia and Brazil and consisted of “tens of millions of
attacks.” The biggest issue, besides losing data to the malicious actors, is
the challenge of repelling DDOS attacks without the use of specialized services
that can dissipate the load.
The Labor Party says they have returned to normal
operations and the attack only slowed their campaign activities.