Cyber-attacks against the UK Electoral Commission reveal an ongoing threat to democracy

By Joe Burton, Professor of International Security (Security and Protection Science), Lancaster University

The revelations this month that data on 40 million UK voters had been exposed to hackers came as no surprise to many cybersecurity experts, who have long pointed out the vulnerability of democracies to malicious online interference.

In this case, it appears that the data and systems of the UK’s Electoral Commission had been available to hackers for over a year. There was a significant delay in reporting the incident due to concerns that the voting networks were still not free…

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