ATLANTA — In a swift response to a potential cyberattack, Georgia election officials successfully mitigated an attempt to disrupt the state’s absentee voter portal earlier this month. The incident was confirmed by the secretary of state’s office.
The targeted attack aimed at the online system designed for voters to request absentee ballots, leading to momentary slowdowns without any crash or data breach, according to officials.
Though the origin of the attack remains unknown, there have been no reports of similar threats affecting other states’ voting systems.
The secretary of state’s office promptly informed federal authorities about the attempted breach. However, federal agencies have not provided comments on the situation.
Early detection systems alerted officials to a slowdown on October 14, just one day before early in-person voting commenced. The agency quickly identified the issue as a denial-of-service attack, where a massive influx of data aims to overwhelm the website and render it inaccessible.
At the peak of the incident, over 420,000 IP addresses attempted to access the site simultaneously. In response, election officials implemented a verification system to confirm user identity, which significantly reduced the traffic and restored normal operations within half an hour.
It was noted that many of the IP addresses involved had been connected to prior denial-of-service attacks.
“Our systems functioned effectively,” an official stated. “We executed our response without any panic.”
