THE Independent National Electoral Commission, INEC, has revealed how it conquered hackers from Asia who launched cyber attacks on its portal during the Ekiti/Osun governorship election.
The Chairman, INEC, Prof Mahmood Yakubu, said the hackers were on rampage and launched several cyber attacks on its portal in order to gain access and compromise authentic election results.
Yakubu disclosed this on Friday while presenting a keynote address at the official launch of Yiaga Africa Election Result Analysis Dashboard (ERAD) Report on Electronic Transmission of Results in the 2022 Ekiti and Osun Governorship Election in Abuja.
He said: “Now another technical concern for us was the repeated attempts to break through our cyber security system for the portal.
“Our engineers reported several cyber attacks on the portal during the Ekiti and Osun governorship elections.
“Some of them were traced to as far as Asia. So people will naturally try and hack the system so we have to be on our toes every day to make sure that we protect the portal.
“In the Anambra governorship election, we did not drop the link for the uploading of results until around 5:30pm because there are several spikes early morning, consistent attacks.
“So we had to build another dummy system to divert the attention of the hackers. But even so in Anambra by 11pm people knew the outcome of the election.
“So people will continue to attack the system and we will continue to be one step ahead of them.
“And so far I am glad to note that all the attempts to hack our system failed. Anybody operating web portal understands that the risk of attacks so we have to be a step ahead of them.”
He assured that the Commission is confident of the security it has deployed for INEC Result Viewing (IReV) portal web presence, and will continue to remain vigilant and strengthening its defences.
The INEC boss added that, “We have tasked our engineers to do everything possible to fully protect the IReV and our web resources.
“I must at this point say that these innovations were creation of the Commission. So we are reasonable on top of the game in order to protect our own systems I think the engineers at INEC deserve an applause.”