FORMER Comelec commissioner Gregorio Larrazabal on Wednesday warned the agency against possible hacking activities next week to confuse the voters during the May 9 elections.
He told a media forum in Manila that the Comelec should not be overconfident about securing its elections database while neglecting their other web-based systems.
“If you can hack the website of the Comelec, what stops people from hacking the system and, after elections, post results that are different from the real results to sow confusion?” said Larrazabal, one of the pioneers of the first automated elections in 2010.
He made his statement even as the Comelec and the Philippine National Police disapproved the request of the local candidates of the PDP-Laban in Sorsogon to declare the province an election hot spot.
The party made the request following the alleged harassment experienced by its candidates, led by gubernatorial candidate Eric Dioneda, son of former Reform the AFP Movement leader and former Sorsogon City mayor Leovic Dioneda.
On the night of April 3, Dioneda’s group was having a campaign rally in Buhatan, Sorsogon City, when 20 armed men allegedly came over and told them to stop their campaign.
Meanwhile, the Comelec is providing spare ballots to voters in case their ballots are rejected by the vote counting machines on May 9 through no fault of their own.
Larrazabal said the Comelec and Smartmatic should also secure the website that they would be using on the Election Day.
“This has nothing to do with the provider, Smartmatic. This has nothing to do with the system. This has something to do with the posting of results that don’t jive,” he said.
Just before midnight on Easter Sunday, the group Anonymous Philippines defaced the Comelec’s website (www.comelec.gov.oh) with a message demanding it make sure that the security features of the vote counting machines would be there on Election Day.
Another group, Lulzsec Pilipinas, leaked sensitive personal data and files from the Comelec database.
Larrazabal’s warning came after the decision of Smarmatic International and the Comelec to create a different server and website on Election Day.
In response to Larrazabal, Smartmatic Voter’s Education Chief Karen Jimeno assured him and the public that the separate server and website on Election Day would be “very secure.”
“On the part of Smartmatic, we can guarantee that the whole automated election system will be secure from hacking,” Jimeno said.
‘‘It is very secure and we guarantee that this will not be accessible to hackers.”
Comelec chairman Andres Bautista said they were now changing the system and undertaking different measures to avoid another hacking incident.
Jimeno said it would be impossible for the vote- count machines to be hacked since the system was not connected to the Internet.
“Unlike the Comelec website, which is 24 hours online, the VCMs are not online and are not connected to the Internet. So there is no way for hackers to access it,” she said. with PNA