Our System Was Not Hacked, IEBC ICT Boss Says

The Independent Electoral and Boundaries Commission (IEBC) has refuted reports that its systems were hacked to manipulate election results to the advantage of President Uhuru Kenyatta in the August 8th general elections.

In papers filed at the Supreme Court opposing the petition by National Super Alliance leader Raila Odinga, IEBC ICT Director James Muhati rubbished the claims made in the petition, dismissing them as “ambiguous, unsubstantiated and without any basis”.

Muhati said that the commission engaged highly competent team in developing the system and partnered with internationally recognized and accredited institutions to provide a top-of-the-range government-grade information security system. “The concept and architecture around the security and verifiability of KiEMS ensured that every component had in-built as well as process-related features aimed at guaranteeing the integrity and security of the system,” Muhati said.

Odinga in his petition claimed the commission allowed the system to be infiltrated and the results, which declared Jubilee candidate the winner of the August 8th presidential contest, were fake.

Muhati denied the system was compromised, adding that results were not manipulated in any way. “Remarkably, no evidence or explanation has been offered to lay any basis for the allegations,” he said. The ICT director divulged that only authorized pre-determined tablets were configured to relay or transmit results into the commission’s servers.

“The entire network spectrum was secured with twin external and internal high-level perimeter firewalls, which filtered all the information and only defined and authorized transmission was permitted through the filters,” he said. “No intrusion or intervention was detected as can be seen through the alert mechanisms in-built in the firewalls availed,” he said.