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Security The Internet

Cyberattack Crashes Tennessee County's Website on Election Night (cnet.com) 61

An apparent DDoS attack shut down the Knox County Election Commission's websites as polls closed Tuesday night. From a report: On Tuesday night, as polls were closing for Knox County's primary races for the mayoral election, the county's website displaying the results crashed. The page was down for about an hour starting around 8 p.m. local time before officials were able to restore it, according to the county's Election Commission.

"Although the crash did not affect the vote tallies or the integrity of the election, this is not something that should happen," Mayor Tim Burchett said in a statement Wednesday. "I want to know what happened, and I think an independent review will help determine that so we can move forward and work to prevent similar issues in the future."

The primary election continued, with the county announcing that Glenn Jacobs, also known as WWE wrestler Kane, won the GOP nomination by 17 votes. The crash didn't affect voting or vote tallies because the county's voting machines aren't connected online, an election official told WBIR.

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Cyberattack Crashes Tennessee County's Website on Election Night

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  • Probably a designer ...
  • by Locke2005 ( 849178 ) on Friday May 04, 2018 @12:44PM (#56554612)
    Is getting far more hits than expected distinguishable from a DoS attack?
  • Burchett said the county is hiring Sword & Shield Enterprise Security, a local company, to investigate the crash.

    I'm guessing they won't find the culprit, but will offer their services to protect the county's nice little website from this happening again.

  • by Anonymous Coward

    Did one of the candidates got more than 127 votes and it crashed because the total showed up as negative?

  • by BadBlood ( 134525 ) on Friday May 04, 2018 @12:54PM (#56554678)

    That's the Undertaker's Music!!!!

  • Now THERE is a mayor [wikipedia.org] who can be the "brute squad" at the same time!
  • Could it be that a pro wrestler running in a local election directed enough traffic to crash a small website?

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