In a live broadcast, a Youtube channel under the name of ’Tomanovics Gergely’ showed a new bot filling out the government’s latest National Consultation survey on its website using randomly generated data, including names and email addresses. Government agencies already filed a report with police to investigate the cyber attack. This is not the first time a bot was used against the National Consultation’s website.
The Youtube broadcast first started Saturday night and was ongoing for almost 12 hours. During this time, more than 3,100 questionnaires were filled out by the algorithm, giving random answers.
Soon after, on Monday, the government announced a report would be filed with the police to investigate the cyber attack committed against the survey’s website.
“Government agencies have detected a cyber attack on the official consultation website, with perpetrators attempting to fill out information en masse. Government agencies are taking the necessary steps, including filing criminal charges,” the official kormany.hu website reported.
“We find it unacceptable that certain players are trying to make the dialogue on post-pandemic life impossible,” according to the website.
It is not the first time the government’s National Consultation survey website was accessed by a bot that could easily fill out thousands of questionnaires with random data, as this is exactly what happened last year as well.
The creator of the previous bot said at the time that his algorithm had exploited a very simple development flaw of the web page, if the system had been a bit more cleverly designed, he would not have been able to fill out thousands of surveys with his incredibly primitive software.
Essentially, the government’s site did not use any kind of system that would have enabled web hosts to distinguish between human and automated access (e.g. reCAPTCHA). Presumably, this was the flaw of the new site as well. The government also filed a report at the time, while authorities later pressed charges.
Featured photo via nemzetikonzultacio.kormany.hu
