Opposition PARNAS party cancels primaries over massive leak of voters’ personal data

The Russian Party of People’s Freedom, PARNAS, has had to suspend its internet primaries after a file with personal details of all participants was placed on the party’s website. Top party officials blame unidentified hackers for the privacy breach.

PARNAS was holding primaries in order to finalize its list of candidates for the September parliamentary elections. Ninety-six candidates and about 24,000 voters registered for the procedure, but the number of those who actually voted was much lower.

The file containing logins and passwords of everyone who had taken part in the primaries was posted on the PARNAS website on Sunday afternoon. The data was real and allowed anyone to see full details of any voter – including name, emails and phone numbers, as well as the people they voted for. Site administrators had to shut down the internet voting earlier than planned and recommended that their supporters urgently change all their passwords.

PARNAS leaders blamed the leak on unidentified hackers. Chairman Mikhail Kasyanov publicly apologized for the incident and said that the party’s elections commission had decided to stop the online voting and annul the results because it was impossible to continue the procedure without compromising the voters’ personal data again. However, he added that the commission together with observers from allied parties and movements and PARNAS’ central political council were yet to decide on whether the votes cast before the leak should be counted and considered in the making of the electoral lists. For the full article click here 

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