Georgia officials say they thwarted an attempt to crash a state election website
The Georgia secretary of state's office said it acted quickly earlier this month to thwart an attempt to flood the state’s absentee voter portal in an apparent attempt to crash the site
ATLANTA (AP) — Georgia election officials acted quickly earlier this month to thwart an attempt to flood the state's absentee voter portal in an apparent attempt to crash the site, the secretary of state's office said.
The attack was limited to that part of the state's website, which voters use to request an absentee ballot. Users may have experienced a brief slowdown, but the site never crashed and no data was compromised, said Gabriel Sterling, a top official at the agency.
He said it was not clear where the attack originated. There has been no public indication that similar systems in any other state were subject to the same kind of attack.
The Georgia secretary of state’s office alerted federal authorities about the attack. The FBI, the federal Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency and the Office of the Director of National Intelligence all declined to comment Thursday.
