ISLAMABAD:
Cyber s
ecurity experts on Thursday informed
that the Election Act 2017 exposes and risks citizens’ personal database to be misused by hackers, criminals or possibly in the upcoming general elections 2018.
Official sources released a warning against the Election Act 2017, comprising of a major blunder
that possibly allows breach of voter’s personal database. Sources claim
that the voter’s lists are vulnerable to s
ecurity risks under Section 79(3) of Election Acct 2017.
Section 79 entails three major clauses pertaining to final electoral rolls of all constituencies to be provided to the Returning Officer, passed on to the Presiding officers of all polling stations and lastly for final electoral roll lists including photographs of the voters, to be provided to the District Election Commissioner or any authorized officer, as searchable soft copy by the Returning and Presiding Officers.
Clause 3 states “On application of a candidate or his election agent, the District Election Commission or any officer authorized on behalf of the Commission shall provide to a candidate or an election agent a hard or searchable soft copy on universal serial bus (USB) in portable document format (PDF) or any other tamper-proof format of the final electoral roll with photographs of the voters and shall ensure
that the copy
is same as provided to the Returning Officer and Presiding Officers.”
According to cyber s
ecurity experts, Clause (3) of Section 79 poses a s
ecurity risk to 104 million voters’ database participating in general elections 2018 as the database is derived from National Database and Registration Authority.
Cyber s
ecurity experts claim
that providing the database of registered citizens is a major blunder in formulation of policies regarding privacy and confidentiality of Pakistani nationals. They further said
that the soft copy of the electoral data can be copied within seconds, which may cause massive damage to country’s civil registry and voter database.
The main arguments by experts mainly circle around the breach of the database by hackers, as it would be easily accessible. The officials said
that it may be the case
that political parties get the databases in digital format for
their own benefit.
Sources said
that Section 79(3) of Election Act 2017 should have been revoked in order to safeguard citizen’s database from being breached. Earlier, it was observed
that in United States (US), hackers had attacked database of US voters during 2016 elections in US.
Previously, Facebook chief Mark Zuckerberg had claimed on April 11 in a congressional appearance
that fake accounts may influence general elections 2018. Similarly, experts had earlier observed unusual traffic and attempts by international hackers to compromise online services of Pakistan.
On April 24, Careem taxi service had revealed
that its database had been hacked resulting in theft of 14 million users’ record including the credentials of Careem’s captains’. Careem also said
that hackers had stolen credit card database of dozens of citizens.
Experts further said
that precautions should be taken up as elections approach with numerous plausible s
ecurity risks to the citizens’ database. They stressed
that a national strategy should be made to safeguard such attacks.