OT-Morpho has dismissed claims that the electronic system it supplied to the Independent Electoral and Boundaries Commission (IEBC) to biometrically identify voters during Kenya’s elections were hacked.
Speaking to AFP, the French biometrics firm said an audit of the electronic system used to tally votes in the canceled presidential elections showed now manipulation of data.
A look at OT-Morpho’s website, the firm describes itself as a world leader in digital security and identification technologies with a mix of complementary activities addressing the specific needs of five major industries (Financial services, Telecom, Identity, Security and IoT). It adds that it has an extensive global presence and a unique technological expertise (Biometrics, Authentication, Digital security, Data and video analytics).
Opposition leader Raila Odinga and the NASA coalition through a letter to the French government has accused OT-Morpho of allowing unauthorized access to its servers and manipulating the transmission of the presidential results.
According to Raila, hackers used the log-in credentials of the late the Independent Electoral and Boundaries Commission’s ICT manager Chris Msando who whose body was found in Muguga forest just two weeks before the elections. Raila went ahead to produce logs as evidence of how and when the IEBC database was hacked. He further claimed that an algorithm was introduced into the system to manipulate the results as they streamed in.
OT-Morpho’s chief operating officer Frederic Beylier, however, told AFP that the audit, undertaken with help from external experts from security software companies, had shown the system “in no way suffered manipulation of data, attacks, attempts to penetrate the system or anything of that kind.”
“We obviously checked if there could have been questionable manipulations by any authorized or unauthorized persons and can confirm there was no manipulation of data that could raise questions,” said Beylier.
OT-Morpho also told AFP that it had transmitted all its logs to the Independent Electoral and Boundaries Commission, and was willing to participate in another external audit under the IEBC’s authority.
OT-Morpho was contracted by IEBC to supply 45,000 tablets to be used to identify voters biometrically and an associated system used to transmit the results of votes counted by electoral officials as well as a photograph of the paper form 34A on which votes were tallied.
Source: AFP
Read>>Cybersecurity: ICT CS Joe Mucheru says Alshabaab will hack 2017 polls
Featured Image: www.thebigissue.co.ke
One Comment