Bangladesh Election App Crashes Amid Suspected Cyberattack

Ukraine and Germany have been accused of waging a cyberattack to crash an app used in the past weekend's national election in Bangladesh.

Mohammed Jahangir Alam, official secretary of the Bangladesh Election Commission, did not specify the type of attack or reason for it, but he said the team has been working to fix the issue, according to reports. "Although the app is functioning slowly, it’s still working," said Alam, who blamed Ukraine and Germany for the cyber disruption.

The Smart Election Management BD app is not used for voting but allows Bangladeshi citizens to stay updated on the elections, offers access to historical and current data on electoral candidates and associate parties, and provides information on voter turnout.

While targeted distributed denial-of-service (DDoS) attacks were not ruled as the cause of the app's performance, researchers from Cloudflare told The Record that botnets operating within the borders of Ukraine and Germany could have been the cause of the issue.

Dark Reading contacted Cloudflare for comment and details on the issue but had not heard back as of posting.

Meanwhile, national elections take place in several nations this year, and several threat actors have been identified as increasing their influence efforts, leading to some nations training staff in electoral cyber threats.