Romania's election results annulled after systems saw over 85,000 cyberattacks

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WTF?! Romania's constitutional court has thrown out the results of the first round of the presidential election amid evidence of possible Russian meddling through cyberattacks. There was also evidence of an insidious social media influence campaign.

It's been a wild ride for democracy in Romania lately. A declassified report from the country's Intelligence Service reveals that this year's presidential elections were targeted by over 85,000 cyberattacks originating from 33 nations on November 19.

The agency said the hackers accessed Romania's central election infrastructure to alter information and deny system access. The bad actors used various vectors, including SQL injection and cross-site scripting on voter registration websites.

The hackers also leaked account credentials for these sites on a shady Russian hacker forum less than a week before the first round of voting. The Intelligence Service believes the attacks were state-sponsored due to the massive scale and resources involved.

Unfortunately, it doesn't end there. A separate declassified Romanian intel report states that officials uncovered evidence of a coordinated Russian influence campaign on TikTok. The effort favored Romanian presidential long-shot Calin Georgescu.

The report says over 100 Romanian TikTok influencers with a combined 8 million followers were paid to post pro-Georgescu content using specified hashtags. The campaign got seriously amplified around November 13, with Georgescu's videos cracking the top 10 trending by November 26. Some of the suspected TikTok accounts used for the campaign were years old but had been largely inactive until mid-November, when they suddenly kicked into high gear promoting Georgescu.

The Intelligence Service connected the dots back to Russia, noting textual overlaps between the Georgescu messaging and a similar Russian-backed campaign in Moldova. Bleeping Computer notes that investigators believe Russia views Romania as a strategic adversary because of its NATO ties. However, they didn't explicitly name the country as the perpetrator of the attacks.

With all this weighing on the election's legitimacy, Romania's top constitutional court decided to scrap the results entirely and call for a re-run. It's a pragmatic move but could shake public confidence in the electoral process.

Image credit: Sasha Pleshco

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Romania's election results annulled after systems saw over 85,000 cyberattacks

 
The Talking Tech said:
The Americans.... Didn't you see how Elon Musk manipulated voters?...and he didn't even need to hack them .
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Nope. America is divided. If it was not Trump, it would be someone else totally opposite of what Democrats presented.
People forget that beside a candidate who is running, there are ideas, there are wishes and hopes of the people. Wishes that are not satisfied by the opposite side. He "influenced," the election but
there was no manipulation unless you also agree to call manipulation a celebrity entertaining the crowd to make them vote for a candidate.
 
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toooooot said:
Nope. America is divided. If it was not Trump, it would be someone else totally opposite of what Democrats presented.
People forget that beside a candidate who is running, there are ideas, there are wishes and hopes of the people. Wishes that are not satisfied by the opposite side. He "influenced," the election but
there was no manipulation unless you also agree to call manipulation a celebrity entertaining the crowd to make them vote for a candidate.
Click to expand...
I didn't know the celebrities Democrats invited to talk and sing were bribing people with money to get registered and vote for that specific political party....which is exactly what Elon Musk did.
 
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The Talking Tech said:
I didn't know the celebrities Democrats invited to talk and sing were bribing people to get registered and vote for that specific political party....which is exactly what Elon Musk did.
Click to expand...
When the stakes are great, no matter the competition, people will try and cheat. This goes for EVERYTHING, not just elections - and ALL sides are guilty of it… sports tends to be the one we focus on most - showing how much the ‘real world’ really means to most people…
 
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Until the Eastern EU states break the Bolsheviks' stranglehold, they will continue to suffer. The last thing the Bolsheviks will allow is the loss of control over Romania. Look what they are doing to Hungary. I'm surprised they haven't started calling the Romanians RW Nazis since Romania wants to leave the EU and drop the euro. Poland, Hungary, Yugoslavia, etc. have been under the thumb of the Bolsheviks for so long-Poland for 800+ years.
 
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Jeff Murray said:
Until the Eastern EU states break the Bolsheviks' stranglehold, they will continue to suffer. The last thing the Bolsheviks will allow is the loss of control over Romania. Look what they are doing to Hungary. I'm surprised they haven't started calling the Romanians RW Nazis since Romania wants to leave the EU and drop the euro. Poland, Hungary, Yugoslavia, etc. have been under the thumb of the Bolsheviks for so long-Poland for 800+ years.
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Most of the Romanians do not want to leave EU or Nato and can't drop the euro because Romania still uses their own currency. Economic relations with Russia are minimal and politic relations are about 0. As for Poland being under the Bolsheviks for 800 years ... you are clearly hallucinating. The Bolshevik movement started in 1900.
 
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It’s wild to see how vulnerable even critical processes like elections can be to outside interference. A re-run sounds like the only way forward, but it’s tough to imagine how they’ll rebuild trust after something like this.
 
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Plutoisaplanet said:
I guess an American citizen exercising their 1st amendment right to endorse a candidate he’s a constituent is election interference?? I had no clue!
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Romanian here: The legislation and constitution is a bit different than the US. You are allowed to go public with support free of charge or paid (but needs to be marked) until 2 days before an election. In private you can do as you please until the last minute. Meaning if you post something in private on Facebook it is allowed but not a public post.
Problem for RO legislator was: Support was not clearly stated but manipulated trough hashtags on TikTok. Bot farms were used and not removed at the request of the authorities. Support was remunerated, both the candidate and the influencers did not declare the amounts in question and did not declare this as election publicity which is against the law.
Moreover the winner of the 1st round declared 0 EUR as campaign budget which was immediately proven false as the police asked for disclosure from the marketing company which complied. Also some influencers declared they were duped and also incriminated themselves for not declaring amounts received.
Also as of yesterday the general attorney had enough evidence to bring in for questioning some tens of persons for various reasons. Bringing in for questioning is permitted only by a judge after reviewing the evidence. This does not mean arrest automatically, though some have been placed on judicial watch (weekly monitoring) due to being violent in public, or on social media. Means death threats, nazi simbolism, the nasty stuff.
 
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We still do paper elections in Norway - everything else is digital, but when voting we do paper ballots and then each «box is counted twice by two people seperately who only after counting, compares the results for verification.
Safe to say, elections are expensive due to this :)
 
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Jeff Murray said:
Until the Eastern EU states break the Bolsheviks' stranglehold, they will continue to suffer. The last thing the Bolsheviks will allow is the loss of control over Romania. Look what they are doing to Hungary. I'm surprised they haven't started calling the Romanians RW Nazis since Romania wants to leave the EU and drop the euro. Poland, Hungary, Yugoslavia, etc. have been under the thumb of the Bolsheviks for so long-Poland for 800+ years.
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The bolshevik stranglehold was created by Stalin, Roosevelt and Churchill at the Ialta(Yalta) meeting in 1944, and yet romanian people are not at all anti-american. It is not like we want to leave European Union and we are not an euro country yet.So please check your sources.
 
DanteSmith said:
Really ? What kind of retard gets manipulated by this?
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Most of us buy overpriced, hyped items/services that we don't need. We go visit places that we know nothing about just because it's trending. We buy certain brands because of the advertising done in many forms: TV, web, celebrities, social media. I wouldn't go as far as saying most of us are retards. We are susceptible to manipulation and there are moments when we are more so. You only have to push the right buttons at the right time. Social media made possible to profile people, learn what are their buttons and target them more precisely.
 
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It's a full circus down here in Romania, the society was divided by a guy that has half paranoia and half schizophrenia. He is the reason that RU got involved. He declared his love for russian culture and Putin leadership.
More or less it's the same situation that you had there in US with the new president.
 
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Squid Surprise said:
When the stakes are great, no matter the competition, people will try and cheat. This goes for EVERYTHING, not just elections - and ALL sides are guilty of it… sports tends to be the one we focus on most - showing how much the ‘real world’ really means to most people…
Click to expand...
One thing is a seeing people cheat in sports or any sort of entertainment, but when your wellbeing and your family's depends on whoever wins in a political race, the word cheating shouldn't even be mentioned neverless letting it happen.
 
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Plutoisaplanet said:
I guess an American citizen exercising their 1st amendment right to endorse a candidate he’s a constituent is election interference?? I had no clue!
Click to expand...
When that USA citizen is bribing others with money to register and vote for the party he is supporting then that's indeed election interference....that's indeed what Elon Musk did.
 
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takaozo said:
It's a full circus down here in Romania, the society was divided by a guy that has half paranoia and half schizophrenia. He is the reason that RU got involved. He declared his love for russian culture and Putin leadership.
More or less it's the same situation that you had there in US with the new president.
Click to expand...
They are looking for anything to help them beat Ukraine. Any destabilization in Europe or anywhere else will be used. Pretty much like USSR did when it still existed. Which brings me to reminder, Russia is the same cou.. empire* that existed 50 100 or 300 years ago, with every attribute such as slavery, aggression, or a permanent ruler.
And it honestly gives me hope because it is like a very sick man who looks fine on the outside, but can die within weeks. Let Russia end like USSR, the West just needs political will to disarm it this time. The threats of using nukes, multiple assassinations including radioactive poison, there is no reason for this pseudo empire to exist in this time.
 
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