Election poll shot down by DDoS-ers

[InfoSec News <alerts () infosecnews org>]

http://www.theregister.co.uk/2012/03/26/hong_kong_vote_hack/

By Phil Muncaster
The Register
26th March 2012

Two local men have been arrested after an online referendum organised by 
Hong Kong university to poll citizens on their choice of chief executive 
was disabled in an apparent denial of service attack.

Broadcaster Radio Television Hong Kong (RTHK) reported that the men, 
aged 17 and 28, were arrested at the weekend after the online poll was 
disrupted for a large part of Friday and some of Saturday.

Hong Kong university’s Public Opinion Program set up the 'Civic 
Referendum Project' because people who live in the Special 
Administrative Region (SAR) of China are not given the power to vote 
directly for their CEO – effectively the head of the Hong Kong 
government.

Instead a pre-selected 1,200-strong Election Committee full of 
pro-Beijing businessmen is given the task, a fact that is angering a 
growing number of democracy-hungry locals, especially given that this 
year’s candidates were universally unpopular and tainted with scandal.

AFP reported that Hong Kong uni’s back-end systems buckled under the 
huge volume of traffic.

[...]

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