The website of a Mexican political opposition party was hit by a cyber attack during Tuesday’s final television debate between presidential candidates ahead of the July 1 vote, after the site had published documents critical of the leading candidate. The National Action Party (PAN) said that its website, targeting front-runner Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador, likely suffered a distributed denial of service (DDoS) cyber attack with the bulk of traffic to the site nominally coming from Russia and China. Lopez Obrador’s Morena party said it had nothing to do with the outage. The Chinese and Russian embassies in Mexico did not immediately respond to requests for comment. Reuters could not confirm the PAN’s account of the attack.
Although there have been no clear signs of foreign meddling in Mexican campaigns, a U.S. probe into possible Russian interference in the 2016 U.S. election has made Mexicans watchful for possible foreign virtual attacks that could muddy the country’s biggest-ever election.
However, the countries where the traffic to the PAN site were generated could be entirely unrelated to the true source and the attack could be intended to create confusion, cyber security experts said.
Full Article: Cyber attack on Mexico campaign site triggers election nerves | Reuters.
