The Rolling Stone was among outlets reporting that the website of Congressional candidate for California’s 25th District Democrat Bryan Caforio was taken down by DDoS attacks four times during his unsuccessful campaign, including critical junctures such as during a debate. Caforio ultimately lost the election to a fellow Democrat by a narrow margin. An expert with Corero Network Security offers perspective.
Sean Newman, Director Product Management at Corero Network Security:
“Reports of disruption, earlier this year, to the campaign website of a California state primary election candidate, demonstrate how easy it is for malicious actors use DDoS attacks to disrupt or potentially influence the outcome of what is supposed to be an unbiased process. Every time the website was offline there was potential for significant impact to the democratic process, denying voters access to key information or resources needed to allow the process to run as intended.
“Governments themselves and anyone participating in their democratic elections, need to ensure they have effective protection in place to fully safeguard that democratic process. Only the latest generation of truly real-time DDoS protection solutions can automatically and surgically block attacks, leaving regular traffic unimpeded, to ensure that web-based resources remain continually available and, in this case, the democratic process is not impacted.”
