Romania’s election was target of cyberattacks and misinformation, parliament finds

To date, given all the column inches dedicated to it, there appears to be little evidence linking digitally spread misinformation to the outcome of a general election—until now.

Romania’s scrapped presidential election was targeted by Russian cyberattacks, misinformation, and propaganda, the country’s parliamentary committee has concluded.

Two weeks ago, the presidential election was annulled after far-right, NATO-sceptic Calin Georgescu secured victory in the first round.

The court reached its decision following the revelation of five declassified documents by the EU and NATO’s top security council, which suggested that election interference may have occurred.

At the time, the court suspected Georgescu benefited from a mass influence operation created to influence the result of the vote, believed to be Russia. Russia has denied these claims.

The FBI, the Officer of the Director of National Intelligence, and the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency have long since warned that Russia was “the most active threat” for misinformation.

Ahead of this year’s US election, they released this joint statement: “We anticipate Russian actors will release additional manufactured content with these themes through election day and in the days and weeks after polls close.”

Now, the Foreign Intelligence Service (SIE) has shown more findings allegedly confirming interference to the Romanian parliamentary committee in charge of overseeing it.

“There were cyberattacks meant to influence the fairness of the election, particularly from Russia, to influence the public agenda by using artificial intelligence and aggressive online promotion,” commission chief Mihai Weber said.

Intelligence agencies reported that around 85,000 attempted hacks were made to access electoral data and change content, including on election day.

“There were [also] misinformation and propaganda campaigns to support Eurosceptic candidates, who were favoured compared with other competitors,” Weber added.

Separately, the EU has also launched an investigation into TikTok for allegedly failing to curb Romanian election interference.

Romanian intelligence reports indicate that Georgescu’s surge in popularity was driven by a “highly organised” and “guerrilla” social media campaign on the platform, which utilised identical messaging and influencers.

The declassified documents that led to the annulment of the election revealed that paid content promoting Georgescu was shared on TikTok without proper labelling as election-related, breaching both TikTok’s own guidelines and Romania’s electoral laws.

One declassified file highlighted that $381,000 was paid towards TikTok influencers in a single month to promote him on the platform.

At the time, Georgescu denied any knowledge of the influencers or financial backers involved in the campaign.

TikTok said in a statement that it has “protected the integrity” of its platform in over 150 elections around the world and is continuing to address these “industry-wide” challenges.

If the EU finds that TikTok breached its digital rulebook, it could face fines worth up to 6% of its total global revenue and be forced to make changes to fix the problem.

To read more on technology and 2024’s eventful election year, click here.