With the mid-term elections just two months away, the Cybercrime Investigation and Coordinating Center is urging the public not to be deceived by false prophets and experts who promise to alter election results in exchange for hundreds of millions.
CICC Executive Director Alexander K. Ramos emphasized that understanding the automated election system (AES) for the May 12 elections is “too complex” and denied claims that the AES is easy to hack.
Ramos issued the warning after the Commission on Elections (Comelec) Chairperson George Garcia filed a cyber libel complaint on February 28 against a vice mayoral candidate in Reina Mercedes town, Isabela province. Garcia personally filed the complaint at the Office of the City Prosecutor in Manila against lawyer Jeryll Harold Respicio for allegedly violating Article 154 of the Revised Penal Code, in relation to Section 6 of Republic Act (RA) No. 10175, also known as the Cybercrime Prevention Act.
The cyber libel complaint stemmed from a video posted by Respicio on Jan. 25 claiming that he could manipulate vote-counting machines and that there were backroom programs capable of altering election results.
“He is completely clueless. His theories are so far and offers misleading info. His insinuations differ from the standards of review in the industry of cybersecurity,” Ramos said.
The CICC chief said that the automated election system has three layers of security to ensure that results are not altered. First, the machine is locked and cannot be altered once it has been programmed.
Second, the transmission is too complex to understand that there is a designated time when it can connect and where to connect. Encrypted files pass a seven layer security system and receiving end will only receive packets of data approximately 220kb of encrypted file from registered IP and devices in it’s system.
The third layer of security is the consolidation server which is programmed to receive only encrypted files. The key is kept in the Banko Sentral ng Pilipinas (BSP).
ISSUED BY CICC EXECUTIVE DIRECTOR ALEXANDER K. RAMOS
