Hackers ‘crashed’ Brexit website

UK lawmakers say referendum site may have crashed before deadline due to hacking

A website which allowed Britons to register to vote in last year’s European Union referendum might have been targeted by foreign hackers causing it to crash before the deadline, a committee of British lawmakers said on Wednesday.

More than a million potential voters applied to register online in the runup to the deadline two weeks before last June’s vote and the government extended the cut-off point after the website crashed, blaming it on a late rush by mainly young citizens.

In a report, Parliament’s Public Administration and Constitutional Affairs Committee (PACAC) said it “does not rule out the possibility” that the crash on June 7 was caused by a distributed denial of service (DDoS) cyber attack.

Britain voted on June 23 to leave the EU.

The report did not say who might have been behind the attack but named Russia and China as countries with a sophisticated approach to cyberinterference.

The committee said the incident had no material effect on the outcome of the referendum, but that lawmakers were “deeply concerned about these allegations about foreign interference.”

Russia has been accused of trying to influence the 2016 US election and the committee said the government needed to ensure future elections and referendums were monitored with plans in pace to respond to and contain any cyber attacks.

“The US and UK understanding of ‘cyber’ is predominantly technical and computer-network based. For example, Russia and China use a cognitive approach based on understanding of mass psychology and of how to exploit individuals,” the report said.

“The implications of this different understanding of cyber-attack, as purely technical or as reaching beyond the digital to influence public opinion, for the interference in elections and referendums are clear.”

The committee said the referendum was generally well-run, but called for greater emphasis on cyber security in the future.

The lawmakers’ report was also critical of the government’s failure to prepare for a vote for Brexit and former Prime Minister David Cameron’s motives for calling the referendum in the first place, saying using plebiscites as a “bluff call” to close down “unwelcome debate” was questionable.

Cameron, who had campaigned to stay in the EU while many in his party backed Brexit, quit after losing the vote.

“There was no proper planning for a Leave vote so the EU referendum opened up much new controversy and left the prime minister’s credibility destroyed,” the report said.

It said that in future, the sitting government should “continue in office and take responsibility for the referendum result in either eventuality.”