Georgia secretary of state's office fends off cyberattack on absentee voter website

Source: WANF-TV/Atlanta, GA

Published: Oct. 23, 2024 at 8:54 PM EDT|Updated: 10 hours ago


ATLANTA, Ga. (Atlanta News First) - The Georgia secretary of state’s office fended off a cyberattack against Georgia’s absentee voter website this month, election officials confirmed Wednesday.

Officials with the secretary of state’s office told CBS News their cybersecurity team prevented hackers from crashing the site around Oct. 14.

The state’s online security experts were alerted to a large spike in attempts to access the absentee ballot portal, which election officials called a coordinated attempt to crash the site. They said there were more than 420,000 nearly simultaneous attempts to access the site from around the world.

“This was a big win for our cybersecurity team and our partners,” Gabriel Sterling, chief operating officer for the secretary of state’s office, said on X, formerly Twitter, on Wednesday evening. “We work every day to protect Georgia voters and our systems.” The secretary of state’s office told CBS News they don’t know who was behind the attack, but it may have been a foreign nation.

Read more: https://www.atlantanewsfirst.com/2024/10/24/georgia-secretary-states-office-fends-off-cyberattack-absentee-voter-website/