On Thursday, July 11, the first stage of testing the e-voting system was completed, which will be used during the experiment in the elections of deputies of the Moscow City Duma on September 8.
According to Artem Kostyrko, the head of the Information Technologies Department of the capital of the Russian Federation, 178 attempts were made to replace the bulletins.
“Several attempts were recorded to find a link to a unique anonymized bulletin during the test voting. The attacks were professional,” Kostyrko said.
Kostyrko explained that it was not a system failure, but a data output failure. However, it happened 3 hours before the end of the voting. By this time, 75% of all participants voted.
He noted that the system was ready for attacks and they were fixed to be sent to the e-voting monitoring group for study.
Moreover, 1253 students took part in the testing and pointed out the shortcomings. "We conducted the first testing with students for a reason, because they are advanced users of gadgets, they can compare with applications and point out shortcomings," Kostyrko added.
Kostyrko noted that several more public tests are planned. "IT professionals will test e-voting system next week. We will ask hackers to try to hack the system, put a fake voice and so on."
In addition, a hacker who can hack the electronic voting system will be offered a cash prize of 1.5 million rubles (23 800 $). He added, “if hackers manage to hack the system, it doesn't mean it's bad. This means that our colleagues gave us an opportunity that we did not see. And we will say thank you to them!”
Recall that the idea of conducting an experiment with the blockchain elections to the Moscow City Duma at the end of February was proposed by a group of Russian State Duma deputies representing United Russia and the Liberal Democratic Parties. The Russian State Duma supported the proposed bill, and on May 29, Russian President Vladimir Putin signed the relevant law. On September 8, electronic voting will be held in three electoral districts, and voters will be able to decide in what form they will vote in traditional or online.
