We all know that any system is only as strong as its weakest link. The overall number of cyberattacks in Bulgaria this year has been declining compared to last year, but they have been growing more and more powerful, the National Cyber Security Centre says. One of these attacks took place during the local elections in the country, when the website of the Central Election Commission was hacked, along with a number of other government sites which crashed.

Krassimir Gadjokov has been working in the sphere of cyber security for ten years at a leading telecommunications company in Canada. Here is how he describes the biggest menaces on the web:

“There is a widespread cyber threat to home computers that installs a virus without you ever knowing about it, which later encrypts the entire hard drive database. Then a message appears that if you want to be given the key to decrypt your information you have to pay a given sum. These are highly successful attacks, because no one is able to tackle the problem by himself. Another popular cyberattack is an email allegedly coming from the financial institution you work for, but it is actually from hackers. This is most often the case with banks – you get a message that you have to change your username or password, the aim being to click on a link that looks real enough but is not. This is one of the ways hackers try to find out your username and password which they then use for syphoning off money. In this sense it is a good thing that most Bulgarian banks require an electronic signature for withdrawals. This means that even if someone has managed to get to your bank’s username and password, they will only be able to see what transactions you make but will not be able to withdraw money. Cyberattacks against state institutions usually crash websites.”

In the words of Mr. Gadjokov there are technologies providing effective protection against cyberattacks like the attacks on Bulgarian government institutions. These attacks did not result in any change or leak of the information posted there. The aim of the attacks was to bring them down. But there are certain kinds of attacks that break into the websites of the respective institution with the express purpose of extracting information. Steps have now been taken in the state administration to select projects for the protection of government websites. And as the planned e-government project is making progress, in future it will be vital to provide its websites with constant protection.

Krassimir Gadjokov and a group of cyber security experts have drawn up an analysis which shows that an investment of 500,000 leva a year has to be made for the reliable protection of the websites of Bulgarian institutions. Being an expat, Krassimir is personally affected by the results of the referendum on electronic voting conducted not long ago.

“To my mind, it was a mistake to hold the referendum parallel with the local elections, for which the turnout is always lower. As a result the referendum fell short of the necessary minimum. In California, for example, there is no minimum turnout requirement for the referendum result to be accepted. In Bulgaria the requirement is for 400,000 signatures for holding a referendum from the public, not state institutions; in California, which has five times the population of Bulgaria, the requirement is for 380,000 signatures and the deadline to collect them is 150 days, whereas in Bulgaria it is 90 days. There are huge barriers in the Referendum Act and they have to be eliminated.”

Krassimir has developed one of the most popular online browser applications that blocks “anonymous media” i.e. which do not display any information about ownership or publisher because:

“When one is surfing for information, especially political or information of public interest, one must be able to see who is behind the given media, whether he or she has some kind of private interest and whether the information is propaganda. Some of them told me they were posting information taken from other websites and that is so. In the public domain one has to take responsibility but what I have been seeing is rumours and conspiracy theories. On the basis of these rumours and theories people form an opinion and then make erroneous decisions or decisions that are downright dangerous to themselves or to the public at large. Voting at elections is a case in point.”

English version: Milena Daynova