Hackers Breach Russia's 'Invulnerable' Voting System Ahead of State Duma Elections

In brief: The anonymous hacker group, CikLeak, announced that it had infiltrated the infrastructure of the Central Election Commission’s GАS “Elections 2.0: system. News of the leak came just hours after the head of the CEC told a seminar that it was conducting a vulnerability assessment of the system ahead of elections to the State Duma

At a meeting of Russia’s Central Election Commission (CEC) , its head, Ella Pamfilova, provided an update on the GAS Vybory State Automated Election System (GAS Elections 2.0), which was unveiled earlier this year in preparation for the upcoming elections to Russia’s State Duma.

In August, Pamfilova claimed the system was “impossible to hack.” At the CEC meeting, however, she and Russia’s Deputy Minister of Digital Development, Oleg Kachanov, acknowledged that the platform had faced an unprecedented number of cyberattacks since its launch. They nevertheless insisted that it remained “maximally secure” and said its digital defenses would be reinforced by physical security measures protecting both the system’s infrastructure and polling stations.

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Within hours of Pamfilova’s assurances, the anonymous hacker group CikLeak announced it had breached the CEC’s GAS Elections 2.0 infrastructure, as well as that of its contractor Tsifrotekh, a subsidiary of Rostelecom.

The hack included reams of internal company documents, source code, meeting recordings, passwords, and employee correspondence.

In its internet announcement, which was also released to media outlets including the independent Important Stories outlet, CikLeak was at pains to point out that its intention had not been to disrupt or interfere with the voting process itself, but to highlight how easily the system would allow the authorities to falsify the election results.

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The hackers said they wanted to send a message to Russian citizens encouraging them to vote in person. According to them, the new CEC remote electronic voting system is completely opaque and vulnerable to manipulation, allowing authorities to falsify election results.

The independent Russian outlet Important Stories said it had reviewed the trove of documents provided by CikLeak and verified their authenticity. The publication added that it would release its own assessment of the materials and their significance. They also contacted the director of Tsifrotekh, Alexey Gusev, for a , but he simply replied: “This is the first time I’ve heard of it.”

The GAS Elections 2.0 system, introduced at the beginning of 2026, replaced the older version that had been running since the late 1990s. Elections to the ninth convocation of the State Duma this month will be the first federal-level vote conducted using the new system.

Addressing the CEC meeting, Pamfilova described Russia’s new electoral system as a world leader in technological sophistication. According to her, the platform would allow the commission to uphold its “fundamental standards,” including remote electronic voting and video surveillance, throughout the upcoming State Duma elections.