Digital Disaster: Electoral Commission Data Breach Leaves 40 Million UK Voters Exposed

In the wake of the revelation that a hostile cyber-attack between February and May of last year was able to access the data of 40 million voters without being detected, along with the lack of notification to the public for about ten months, public confidence in the UK’s electoral regulator has been sorely tested. 

It is estimated that the personal information of approximately 40 million U.K. voters has been vulnerable for over a year – as a result of the Electoral Commission falling victim to a complex cyberattack. It has been reported that in October 2022, the Electoral Commission noticed suspicious activity on its network and confirmed that it had detected it. 

The Electoral Commission is responsible for supervising elections in the country. Unidentified “hostile actors,” however, gained access to the company’s systems over a year earlier, in August 2021, and it was later revealed that the company had been compromised by such actors. 

There have been reports to the Information Commissioner’s Office (ICO) as well as the National Crime Agency that the attack was detected within 72 hours after it was reported to them. An intrusion allowed unauthorized access to the servers of the Commission, which house email, control systems, and copies of the electoral registers that the Commission maintains for research purposes, having enabled the intrusion to become successful. It is currently unknown who the

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