A hacker’s perspective on Mozambique’s 2014 election

Every now and than we read reports in the media that “hackers” managed to break into a highly secured database or system for electronic payments. Government institutions, banks or companies that develop software with strong security features often contract such hackers to test the solidity of the safety measures they built into new procedures and applications. The hackers specialize in looking for weaknesses in the security features of a system and demonstrate their expertise by stealing or manipulating data.In this note we look with the eyes of hackers at the tabulation process in the forthcoming elections. The central question is which vulnerabilities we can identify in the security features. Or in other words: are there instances in the process where manipulation is possible? An electoral process is traditionally subject to strict security measures as these must guarantee that the results reflect correctly and transparently the preference expressed by each of the voters. If there is widespread trust that all actors will respect the rules of the game, the security measures do not need to be elaborate. But the stronger the perception that not everyone will always play by the book, the stronger the need to enhance and enforce security measures. The country’s electoral legislation has been under constant revision. A new package was discussed and approved after every electoral cycle so far. At the core of these discussions was not how the electoral system can become more representative, how technical flaws can be removed or how the system can become more cost-effective. Time after time the driving force for reforms have been experiences that the system had been “hacked”. The most recent reforms concentrated on the integration of party members in the Technical Secretariat for Electoral Administration as well as in the teams that staff the polling stations. The aim of these measures is not to make the process more efficient, but purely to improve the protection against “hackers”. Renamo has systematically accused Frelimo of “stealing” elections and based on that logic they would only rely on their own loyal eyes watching over all the operations to prevent fraud. As part of the peace negotiations Renamo managed to push through a last-minute amendment of the election legislation to integrate party representatives of the three parties in Parliament in Election Commissions at all levels, the STAE at all levels and now also as polling station staff. Are you curious? Clik here.http://www.cip.org.mz/article.asp?lang=&sub=actual&docno=324