UNDERFIRE Zimbabwe Electoral Commission (Zec) chairperson
Justice Priscilla Chigumba has sensationally claimed that suspected hackers
recently broke into the electoral management body’s database and stole crucial
information on the biometric voters’ roll, escalating fears of electoral
manipulation ahead of the polls.
The development comes in the wake of publication of a
report by an independent data management team exposing irregularities, errors
and omissions on the voters’ roll, which threatens the credibility of the
polls, which are just a few days away.
Chigumba told local radio station StarFM on Monday that the
hackers cloned the commission’s domain, which hosted the voters’ roll complete
with phone numbers and splashed the data on the internet.
“That was a serious cyber security breach. They actually
cloned our site and we are in the process of doing something about it and we
should have that site taken down in the course of the week,” she said.
“The host is UK-based, so it’s not actually in Zimbabwe. So
we can’t use any of our local laws to bring it down, but we are trying our
best.”
The development raises further concerns over the
credibility of the voters’ roll and security of the ballot considering that the
biometric voters’ data captured by Zec during the voter registration included
personal details such as fingerprints, pictures, addresses, cellphone numbers,
national identity numbers and physical addresses.
The alleged security breach came after Zec was warned by
biometric voter registration kits suppler Laxton Group Limited that such
security breaches were possible.
“Allowing this data to go through multiple systems and
companies will create obvious issues and open up holes for data breach,” Laxton
Group warned in a security report dated June 6, 2017.
Chigumba made the disclosure after she was accused of
leaking voters’ personal phone number to the ruling Zanu PF party.
Initially, Zec accused telecommunications service providers
and retail shops of supplying the numbers to the ruling party.
Chigumba said they had now roped in ICT minister Supa
Mandiwanzira to assist with the investigations.
“It’s not in our interest to give out our database to
anybody because it exposes the commission to lawsuits. In fact, to be honest
with you, my name is on that voters’ roll, the names of my children are on that
voters’ roll,” she said.
Mandiwanzira last week said: “This cyber security breach is
unacceptable. The ministry is aware that Zec issued a protected copy of the
roll while the one that has been published on the internet is unprotected. Such
data cannot and should not be made public without permission of the voters
themselves.”
But political analyst Ibbo Mandaza rubbished claims that
Zec could have been hacked, saying Zec was trying to cover up and clear its
soiled image.
“It shows that Zec is not in control or ready for the
elections. The military is in charge like it has always been in the past 18
years. So people are right in being suspicious over the leak. It’s not by
accident, it’s a process,” he said.
Meanwhile, Team Pachedu, which recently conducted its own
external audit of the voters’ roll, this week gave Zec an adverse report of its
findings.
Zec director of public relations Justin Manyau confirmed
receipt of the report and said it had been forwarded to the body’s technical
team. Newsday
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