Finland police have issued a press statement early today that its election result services which help publish vote tallies were hit by a serious cyber attack just a week before the national elections. However, the situation is reported to have been brought under control and will show no effect on the voting process or the actual counting of ballots.
Note- The national elections to be held in Finland are scheduled to be held on April 14th, 2019 from 9 am onward and will conclude at 8 PM on the same day- local time.
Since the country shares a very big border with Russia apart from the European Union, the authorities have already prepared themselves on a full scale to defend their critical IT infrastructure from cyber attacks from a neighboring nation.
In fact, the current attack on the election results system of Finland is suspected to be the work of hackers backed by Russian Intelligence. And with the United States and the UK screeching with evidence that Vladimir Putin’s nation is interfering in western politics, by all means, the suspicion of Finland has turned ripe.
Coming to the curb of fake news circulation, Finland seems to have learned its lessons from last year’s election interference in Sweden where a fake image of Social Democratic Campaign Truck promoting Islam was doing rounds on Facebook and Twitter.
The government of Finland is already aware of the cyber threats and its consequences and so is busy taking the help of European Center of Excellence for Countering Hybrid Threats- which now has over 18 countries as official members.
