Polls for the Parliament elections in Norway held on
Monday,the results of the polls are expected after Tuesday . Amidst all the hacking threats internationally ,
the Norwegian government decided to counter check poll results manually along with the computer.
The Police Security Service (PST) and the Norwegian National
Security Authority (NSM) along with the Directorate of Elections made risk analysis, According to
the reports from that assessment there were no alleged hacking attempts to the election systems,however
considering hacking threats across both domestically and internationally, the Norwegian government
decided to go for old paper counting method.
Norway is the second country in Europe to go back to old
manual counting, Netherland was the first
country in Europe to
go back to manual counting back in March after security experts and hackers
claimed Dutch electoral security systems to be weak.One
hacker claimed iPad security to be better than the Dutch electoral system.
Minister of Local Government and modernization, Jan Tore
Sanner, said that the security measures for the computer systems will be improved. "Security and
trust are vital to the conduct of elections. We shall not be naive, nor allow
for any uncertainty around the security of Norwegian elections. The voters will
rest assured that the election results are accurate. After new threat
assessments undertaken in collaboration with the NSM and PST, we have decided
to initiate additional security measures" , says Sanner.
This year various institutions in Norway,including Foreign
Ministry,Police Security, parliament members from the Labour party, have been targeted by the hackers.The
hacking attempt was traced to a Russian Security service FSB named by Cozy bear. The accused group was linked with
the hacking of US election campaign.
Along with national
parliament elections, Norway also held elections to the Sámi parliament on
Monday. Almost 17,000 people were supposed to vote for the Sami parliament.