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'Life imprisonment awaits hackers who'll try to sabotage polls'


With the recent cyber attacks on government Web sites, the Commission on Elections (Comelec) on Monday warned that hackers who attempt to sabotage the 2010 automated elections would face life imprisonment. "If the automated election system is going to be hacked, that would amount to electoral sabotage where the penalty is definitely life imprisonment," said Ferdinand Rafanan, head of the poll body’s Law Department. Rafanan issued the statement after the Web site of the Technical Education Skills and Development Authority (Tesda) was hacked, redirecting its visitors to the Web site of poll machine supplier Smartmatic. [See: Tesda Website hacked again; users directed to Smartmatic] Tesda is the fifth government agency whose website was defaced since December. Other agencies whose sites were defaced include the Departments of Health, Social Welfare and Development, and Labor and Employment, and National Disaster Coordinating Council. Rafanan said that according to Republic Act 8792 or the E-Commerce Law, hacking as an act is punishable by a fine of P100,000 and imprisonment of six months to three years. "It is a crime to hack," he said. But he stressed that hacking in an attempt to sabotage the automated elections is punishable by life imprisonment as stated in RA 9369 or the amended poll automation law. "Kung mag-iba yung results, electoral sabotage yun, kung mag-iba yung winner (If the results change, that is electoral sabotage, if the winner changes)," he said, adding that even if the results do not change and the number of votes change by almost 10,000, it would still constitute electoral sabotage. Scare tactics? But poll machine supplier Smartmatic-TIM said Monday that these are just some hackers trying to show what they can do. "Hackers are just trying to show their capability against public websites," Smartmatic spokesman Gene Gregorio told GMANews.TV in a phone interview. Comelec spokesman James Jimenez echoed the statement. "We think at this point that it’s vandalism, nanakot lang, gusto lang magpakitang-gilas (they are just trying to scare us, they just want to show off)," Jimenez told reporters in a separate interview. He said they could not yet determine the culprits behind the attacks, but said that the "proper authorities" are already investigating the matter. Jimenez added that since hacking is a "personal activity," it might be possible to track down the person responsible for it. "Right now we’re investigating the hack, I believe we have a copy of the code of the hack," he said. Assurance On the other hand, Gregorio assured the public that it will be hard to penetrate the system that they will be using for the elections. "I don’t think the public should be alarmed," he said. In a separate text message, he said that the automated election system will not be available to the public. "Only Web sites will be visible, but are protected by security firewalls," he said, adding that the only things that will be seen on their website come election day are the results. Jimenez said the Comelec information websites operating on a daily basis will not have the same levels of security that it will put up on election day. "You can expect that the security for the election website will be triply secured, not just the run-of-the mill security." Rafanan, for his part, said the security feature of the Smartmatic system is actually almost impenetrable. "Nag-surrender na yung mga critics natin yung nalaman nila na may 128-bit encryption, alam nila hindi nila kayang gawin, masyadong (Our critics surrendered when they found out that we are going to use a 128-bit encryption, it’s too) secure," he said, adding that if they can penetrate this, they can hack commercial banks as well. "Kung kaya nila ihack ang AES, kaya nila ihack yung mga bangko na din naman nila nagagawa, otherwise sila na ang pinakamayaman (If they can hack the AES, they can hack banks, but they clearly can’t, otherwise they will have become very rich)," he said. On the hacking of government Web sites, Gregorio has this to say: "Tesda should secure their site more. I think everyone involved should increase their cyber security. - RSJ/KBK, GMANews.TV

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