It made national headlines last spring when voting in the race that elected Thomas Mulcair leader of the NDP was disrupted by a Distributed Denial of Services (DDos) attack that delayed voting for hours. Months later, reports the CBC’s Meagan Fitzpatrick, the investigation to unmask the culprits has hit a dead end and the party is dropping the case:
”Scytl, an international company based in Spain, conducted a forensic analysis after the convention but came up dry when trying to pinpoint exactly who was behind the co-ordinated campaign.”
(Click here to read NDP gives up: convention cyber attacker remains a mystery)
The attack prevented NDP members from casting their ballots, forcing the party to delay several rounds of voting until members could finally connect to the Web-based system to cast their ballots. Party officials said they were told another company could continue the investigation, but it would cost several thousand dollars with no guarantee of success.
Despite the experience, the NDP says it hasn’t been soured on online voting. With the Liberal Party of Canada planning its own leadership vote for next spring, it will no doubt be looking carefully at the NDP’s experience as it considers whether or not to use online voting as well.
Meanwhile, after the attack earlier this year, ITBusiness.ca editor Brian Jackson had some advice for the NDP: