Romanian election re-run due to cyber-attacks

At a press conference on December 6th, the Romanian Constitutional Court unanimously announced the annulment of the first round of the presidential elections, in accordance with article 146 (f) of the Constitution, due to interference by cybercriminals and threat actors during the electoral process, counting more than 85,000 cyber attacks against the computer systems in charge of regulating the electoral process, being responsible for the detected irregularities.

This information has been revealed in several reports published by Romanian security and intelligence agencies, which point to a series of aggressive hybrid attacks from at least 2022 until election day itself. The reports point to the creation of accounts on TikTok and Telegram, at least one million euros in external funding for payments to influencers, as well as online advertisements and advanced techniques to evade detection of bots. Due to the amount of resources used, these agencies consider that the authorship corresponds to a state and accuse Russia, which has already carried out hybrid attacks in the past, although it has denied this claims on all occasions.