On Saturday 17th July, a story by The Standard revealed that a 21-year old had gained access into the Independent Electoral and Boundaries Commission (IEBC) database and acquired personal details of 61,617 registered voters from a county in western Kenya.
He was later arrested with a lot of incriminating materials. Data found in the suspect’s possession included names of registered voters, their ID numbers and birth dates.
But Kenya’s IEBC has responded refuting the claims that hackers infiltrated its servers and obtained the personal details of 61,617 registered voters.
The IEBC’s defence: IEBC chairman Wafula Chebukati explained that the register of voters is kept in a Biometric Voter Registration (BVR) system, which he claims has never been tampered with since its installation eight years ago.
He went on to state that IEBC’s systems are isolated and “not connected to the open internet,” meaning that hackers will not be able to gain access to it. In addition, the rest of the commission’s entire internal network is behind a high-security firewall system.”
The information he stated was possibly legitimately obtained from the commission through formal requests and upon payment of requisite fees.
Irrespective of whether it’s true that the IEBC wasn’t hacked, the IEBC still needs to look into how a 21-year-old gained access to records of over 61,000 voters records. Could there be other undiscovered incidents like this?
The next kenyan election is slated to take place in August 2022. This is a wake-up call that interested parties are already taking steps to win the elections.
SourceL Techcabal
