Colorado Election Website Temporarily Offline After Bot Attack

A bot attack temporarily knocked the Colorado Secretary of State’s election results website offline Tuesday night just after 7 p.m., cutting off public access as vote counts began streaming in, The Denver Post reported. The assault did not touch the back-end systems that receive ballot reporting from counties, officials said.

SOE Software Blames Third-Party Scraping Bots, Not Its Own Systems

Jack Todd, a spokesman for the secretary of state’s office, said the attack hit the website’s vendor rather than the state’s own infrastructure. In a statement, Todd explained that SOE Software and other vendors experienced intermittent availability issues caused by unusually high levels of automated traffic from third-party election results scraping entities. The problem was not a vulnerability in SOE’s own systems, he said, but a widespread issue that rippled across other vendors as well.

Captcha Required by 7:45 p.m. as Issue Appeared Resolved

The disruption began shortly after results started posting around 7 p.m. By 7:45 p.m., the office said the issue appeared resolved and the website had begun requiring a captcha system for access.

Colorado Secretary of State's election results website adds captcha after 'increase of traffic'

Other States Using Same Vendor Also Appeared Affected

Todd told The Denver Post that other states using the same vendor also appeared affected, and reporting platforms from other vendors may have been targeted too.

Attacker Still Unidentified as Office Works With Vendor

What remains unclear is who launched the attack. Todd said the secretary’s office was still working with its vendor to fully resolve the issue and had not yet identified the source of the automated traffic.