Election manipulation from state-led hackers is real, say experts

International cyber experts gathered in the national Capital as part of CyFy2017 raised an alarm about attempts to manipulate elections, and thus affecting democracies as part of the new age cyber warfare. Like the alleged Russian hacking of President Emmanuel Macron's En Marche party on the final day of French election campaign and also Russian influence on the 2016 US election, experts said no country in the world, including India are now immuned to the external manipulations in the days to come as digital era takes over.

They counted some 15 incidents since 2007 where external powers attempted to destabilise public opinion of difference countries. Alex Stamos, Facebook chief security officer, admitted its News Feed — accessed by 1.3 billion people every day — had been gamed by foreign actors in an attempt to manipulate elections. Stamos is leading the company's internal investigation into Russian meddling, which includes searching for Facebook posts and political ads tied to Russia or other foreign parties trying to sway the election.

Philip Lark, who leads cyber security programme at European Centre for Security Studies said the current responses to cyber threats were not enough. He said that by 2020 there will be 5 billion people connected though more than 25 million apps with 50 trillion Gigabytes of data coming with risks of fraud, theft, breaches of privacy, and other challenges.

Lark added that each country should have a strategy, policy, regulations, laws, norms and best practices in the cyber domain. Former Swedish PM Carl Bildt said, "States must understand they all have equal potential of power in the digital world, thus there is a balance."

Earlier such manipulations were confined to personal and corporate espionage, mostly originating from China, but its entry into the political arena has created consternations around the world. "People have faith in democratic systems that allow them to choose people of their choice to hold high offices and their destiny. Faith in the system is integral to democracy. Once this faith is demolished, it will pave a way to anarchy," said David Ernst, CEO of Liquid Democracy Technologies in his lecture on hacking democracy. The threat is real, he believed, saying democracies all over world were already facing issues like widespread underrepresentation. The culture of democracies are in real danger, with more people doubting representative character of their elected public representatives, they warned.

Daniel Coats, the US's director of National Intelligence recently told the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence that Moscow has a highly advanced offensive cyber programme, and in recent years has assumed a more aggressive cyber posture. "This aggressiveness was evident in Russia's efforts to influence the 2016 US election, and we assess that only Russia's senior-most officials could have authorised the 2016 US election-focused data thefts and disclosures, based on the scope and sensitivity of the targets." James Lewis, senior vice-president at the Center for Strategic and International Studies, a Washington DC-based think-tank said. Mark Field, UK's Minister of State for Asia and the Pacific, Foreign and Commonwealth Office, said now cyber attacks have become a big global industry, which is worth more than 400 million dollars.

Starting in 2007, the Russians attacked former Soviet satellites like Estonia, Georgia, and Ukraine. But as per an unwritten understanding with the US intelligence agencies, it was believed that such attacks will not be directed towards the US or European democracies. At times Russia has shut down whole segments of cyber space to punish or threaten countries.

A chronology developed from US intelligence sources shows attacks on political systems

April – May 2007 Russia disabled internet of Estonia. The distributed denial of service (DDoS) attack focused on government offices and financial institutions, disrupting communications.

June 2008: Russia punished Lithuanian government defaced government web pages.

August 2008: Russian hackers attacked Georgia's internet, the first time Russia coordinated military and cyber action. Georgia's internal communications were effectively shut down.

January 2009: As part of an effort to persuade the president of Kyrgyzstan to evict an American military base, Russian hackers shut down two of the country's four internet service providers. Kyrgyzstan removed the military base.

August 2009: Russian hackers shut down Twitter and Facebook in Georgia

May 2014: Three days before Ukraine's presidential election, a Russia-based hacking group, took down the country's election commission in an overnight attack.

March 2014: Russian government allegedly coordinated military and cyber action disrupted the internet in Ukraine

May 2015: German investigators discovered hackers had penetrated the computer network of the German Bundestag. Hackers were snooping on the workings of the Bundestag, German leaders and NATO, among others. They were trying to penetrate the computers of Chancellor Angela Merkel's Christian Democratic party.

December 2015: Hackers took over the control center of a Ukrainian power station, leaving 235,000 homes without power.

June 2015 - November 2016: In the U.S., Russian hackers penetrated Democratic party computers, and gained access to the personal emails of Democratic officials, which in turn were distributed to the global media by WikiLeaks. The intrusions hurt Hillary Clinton and help Donald Trump win.

October 2015: Hackers attacked the Dutch government's computers to pull out a report about the shoot down of Flight MH17 over Ukraine.

January 2016: A security firm announces that it believes Russian hackers were behind attacks on Finland's Foreign Ministry several years before.