Ukraine 2014 Early Presidential Election
May 25, 2014
Days before the vote, attackers compromised the Central Election Commission and destroyed components of the results system; twelve minutes before polls closed they posted a fabricated results page on the commission's own website showing the far-right candidate Dmytro Yarosh winning with 37 per cent, and Russian television broadcast it. The real count, on paper ballots, gave Yarosh 0.71 per cent and elected Petro Poroshenko in a single round. The operation targeted the announcement of the result, not the result itself.
Офіційні результати
- Petro Poroshenko54,7%9 857 308
Elected in the first round; the CEC adopted the final results protocol on 2 June
- Yuliya Tymoshenko12,8%2 310 050
- Oleh Lyashko8,3%1 500 377
- Anatoliy Hrytsenko5,5%989 029
- Serhiy Tihipko5,2%943 430
- Dmytro Yarosh0,7%127 772
The candidate the fabricated CEC page and the Russian broadcast presented as the winner with 37 per cent
Реєстр доброчесності
Що встановлюють докази, а що ні — поруч, із джерелами та класифікацією для кожного висновку.
Що встановлено
- Порушення процесуПідтверджено
The Central Election Commission's results system was compromised in the days before the vote, disabling core network nodes and leaving the software that displays real-time vote counts inoperative for close to twenty hours.
Докладніше
The head of Ukraine's national computer emergency response team at the time records the compromise on 21 May, attributed to the group CyberBerkut. ODIHR separately recorded that the CEC's informatics system Vybory suffered a cyber-attack on 22 May and that on election night the network linking district commissions to the system was not working, contributing to delays in tabulation.
- Інформаційні операціїПідтверджено
Twelve minutes before polls closed, the attackers posted an image on the CEC website falsely presenting Dmytro Yarosh as the winner with 37 per cent, and Russian Channel One broadcast that fabricated page as the official result.
Докладніше
The image went up at 19:48 EET on 25 May and was shown on Russian television the same evening, with the fabricated figures giving Yarosh 37 per cent against Petro Poroshenko's 29 per cent. Ukrainian officials said the numbers had been prepared in advance and stored on Russian internet resources. Yarosh's actual result was 0.71 per cent; Poroshenko won outright with 54.7 per cent.
- Порушення процесуПідтверджено
The election could not be held on the Crimean peninsula, and polling did not take place in large parts of Donetsk and Luhansk oblasts.
Докладніше
ODIHR recorded intrusion into and forced closure of district commissions by armed groups, intimidation of election officials including abductions and death threats, seizure of equipment and election materials, and the shooting of a candidate proxy — actions it described as attempts to prevent the election and deny citizens the right to participate. Some 1.8 million registered voters in Crimea were outside the process, and only around 6,000 of them transferred their voting address.
Джерела:1 - Іноземне втручанняПідтверджено взаємними даними
Cyber-espionage malware associated with APT28 was found on the Central Election Commission network alongside the disruptive attack, and reconnaissance of the target began in mid-March, more than two months before the vote.
Докладніше
CERT-UA's chief at the time reports finding Sofacy/Sednit (APT28) on the CEC network and describes the compromise as the most technically advanced attack his team investigated. He notes that CyberBerkut claimed to have exploited a zero-day vulnerability in the commission's Cisco ASA software, and judges that a non-state group would be unlikely to hold that level of expertise — an inference about state sponsorship, not a formal attribution by a government or a court.
Джерела:1
Що не встановлено
- Фальсифікація результатівСпростовано
That the count or the declared result was altered — did not happen. The fabricated page never touched a vote: ballots are paper, counted by hand at the precinct and physically delivered for aggregation, and the published official result matched the count. CERT-UA's own assessment is that the attack could in no way have determined the outcome.
- Іноземне втручанняОспорюване
That a named foreign state directed the operation — not formally established. No court ruling or government attribution in this record names a sponsor; the state-sponsorship claim rests on the responders' technical inference and on the immediate amplification of the fabricated page by Russian state television.
- Порушення процесуСпростовано
That the disrupted results system made the election unverifiable — not the case. The real-time display was what failed; the legal count rests on paper protocols. ODIHR assessed the election as characterised by high turnout and the clear resolve of the authorities to hold a genuine election largely in line with international commitments in the vast majority of the country.
Джерела:1
Оцінка процесу
ODIHR found the election was administered largely in line with international commitments across most of the country, despite a hostile security environment in two eastern regions and active attempts by armed groups to derail the process. The Central Election Commission operated independently, impartially and generally efficiently, and met all legal deadlines, though it held some unannounced sessions and stopped posting decisions to its website close to election day.