The cybercrime and digital forensics unit at the Ministry of Interior (MoI) has submitted a notification to the Basic Public Prosecutor’s Office – Skopje, explaining all measures and activities taken to clear the case reported by the State Election Commission (SEC) regarding its website hacking on the election day.
During the investigation, data and logs were provided on the functioning of the system and parts of the system for support of the election process in SEC, the MoI said in a press release on Friday.
“Data were provided by several institutions and companies involved in the election process. The report submitted and the data analysis showed that at the end of the election process, and in particular during the announcement of the preliminary election results, a DDoS attack was registered directed at the website https://www.sec.mk/, which affected the application on the dedicated server for publishing the preliminary results,” the press release reads.
In addition, during the analysis of data obtained from the “Duna Computers” company, which refer to data and files extracted from the servers (databases and system logs) for further analysis on possible problems with their functionality, no malfunction of the system has been detected or any delay in the process of security authentication of the users for entry of the results, the MoI said.
According to the Ministry, the cybercrime and digital forensics unit in cooperation with the Public Prosecutor’s Office, is using all mechanisms for international cooperation with internet service providers that are outside the Ministry’s jurisdiction in order to obtain data on the users of their services.
“The investigation in this case continues to determine the IP addresses where the attack came from, gather additional information to determine the perpetrator of the attack and any other reasons that might have affected or are related to the inability to publish the preliminary results,” MoI’s press release reads.
