Learning from a distributed denial of service attack against a legally binding electronic election: Scenario, operational experience, legal consequences

Abstract

E-voting is the stress point of e-government regarding security requirements. This paper discusses the first known distributed denial of service attack (DDoS) worldwide against a legally binding remote electronic voting channel. In particular, the security considerations, the topology of the attack, and the specific countermeasures are described. The focus of this paper is on analyzing the experience and providing lessons learned. The lessons based on the concrete experience of this case study have been classified by the legal, technical, and operational aspects for handling DDoS attacks against e-government. Furthermore the relationships and interactions between these three aspects are illustrated. © 2011 Springer-Verlag Berlin Heidelberg.