Almost 40M UK voters impacted by Electoral Commission hack

TechCrunch reports that nearly 40 million UK voters had their personal data compromised for over a year following a sophisticated cyberattack against the Electoral Commission. Suspicious network activity was initially detected by the UK elections watchdog last October, with further investigation revealing that its systems have been compromised since August 2021, exposing information from voters registered from 2014 to 2022, including overseas voters. Only impacted individuals have been initially notified about the incident as the Electoral Commission sought to eliminate attackers from its network, coordinate with the National Cyber Security Centre, and Information Commissioner's Office, and strengthen its cybersecurity defenses, according to Electoral Commission spokesperson Andreea Ghita. Despite the compromise, the Electoral Commission emphasized that UK elections security has not been affected. "The UK's democratic process is significantly dispersed and key aspects of it remain based on paper documentation and counting. This means it would be very hard to use a cyberattack to influence the process," said the Commission.