Malicious actors from rogue nations could try to discredit the Tory online vote with false narratives regarding the fairness of an online members’ vote, cybersecurity experts warned.
After the controversial exit of Liz Truss, Conservative MPs will vote for their preferred candidate in a series of ballots. But if there are still two candidates remaining in the race after Monday, Tory party members will take part in an online vote to decide the new UK prime minister.
Online voting concerns
During the last Tory leadership election, held over the summer, the online publication Tortoise managed to register four bogus conservative members to demonstrate how the leadership contest is open to potential exploitation.
The website signed up two foreign nationals, a person who did not exist, and a pet tortoise as members of the Conservative Party. Shockingly, the party accepted its payments of £25 for each registration, and the bogus recruits were issued membership numbers and invited to hustings.
According to James Harding, the editor of Tortoise, the incident had raised serious concerns regarding the safety of the vote.
He condemned the secrecy surrounding the ballot, with the Conservatives refusing to provide real insights regarding the modus operandi of their membership or the security arrangements.
“I think that it’s reasonable if you live in a democracy to try and know who’s voting the prime minister into power,” Harding stated. If you want to have confidence in your democracy you have to have some understanding of how the election works and that someone is supervising it. We could find ourselves in a position where we go to another membership contest and the membership is doing that online and how do we know that’s secure?”
However, Conservative Party chairman Jake Berry insisted that the web ballot will be “secure” even though it had to be ditched for the last contest because of concerns regarding the system loopholes.
Jake Berry "Without going into the security measures we will take, for reasons I'm sure you will understand, we are satisfied that the online voting system will be secure,” Berry stated.
The concerns are raised amid warnings from threat analysts that hostile states like Russia could attempt to hijack the poll and influence who becomes the next Prime Minister.
Previously in 2016, Russia was accused of attempting to interfere in key elections including the US presidential race and the Brexit referendum.
According to Peter Ryan, a professor of applied security at Luxembourg University, KGB hackers could exploit the rules that allow Tory members living abroad to vote.
“We don't know that much about the electorate that is putting in place the leader of a G7 country,” he said. For all we know, the KGB could have signed up a significant number of stooges. The margin last time was low - it would not take much to swing it.”