The website for the new national voter list that was created by re-registering some 8 million people late last year was recently hacked by foreigners, but no data was tampered with, National Election Committee spokesman Hang Puthea said yesterday.

The NEC is presently finalising the list for the June 4 commune elections, and those who registered to vote between September and November have been asked to visit the voterlist.org.kh website to check that their details are correct and to submit any corrections.

However, Puthea told reporters at a restaurant in Phnom Penh that the website’s security had been compromised on Wednesday. He said hackers from outside Cambodia had taken the site offline, but that it was quickly live again.

“We had two obstacles. It was too slow, so the NEC has decided to pay more money to the company to give more speed. Then the speed was OK, but we saw signs of hacking,” Puthea said. “When we opened it, there were about 1 million people [accessing the website], so the website got stuck.”

“We carefully kept the original copies [of the voter list]. The hack was from outsiders and only bothered people searching their names,” the spokesman explained. “We are now working with Japanese experts to prevent and solve any further problems.”

Koul Panha, head of elections monitor Comfrel, said he was satisfied that the new voter list had not been tampered with by those who attacked the website.

“It was only difficult for people who wanted to verify their names online,” Panha said, noting that the NEC’s website had also been hacked before the 2013 election. “We’ve had this problem before.”