INEC probes voter data leak

The Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC) has launched an investigation into the alleged unauthorised access and disclosure of information from its Continuous Voter Registration (CVR) database.

The INEC National Commissioner and Chairman of the Information and Voter Education Committee (IVEC), Mohammed Haruna, disclosed this in a statement on Tuesday in Abuja.

The probe followed reports on social media,claiming that the voter data of a candidate in the recent Federal Capital Territory (FCT) primaries was leaked, using official access credentials.

Haruna said that while INEC’s preliminary findings showed no evidence of an external cyber-attack, the commission took the allegation seriously and had immediately commenced a thorough investigation to establish the facts surrounding the incident.

He explained that as part of the ongoing CVR exercise nationwide, authorised INEC Registration Officers were granted controlled access to specific components of the CVR system.

This, according to him, is to enable them register new applicants, process requests for transfer of registration and update voter records, where necessary.

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He added that such access was restricted to official duties only and withdrawn at the conclusion of the exercise.

Haruna, however, said the audit trail from the preliminary investigation had enabled the commission to identify the user-account through which the information was accessed.

“Accordingly, relevant personnel have been questioned, and all units connected with the incident are cooperating fully with the investigation.

“The commission is also examining all technical, administrative and operational factors associated with the matter in order to establish individual responsibility,’’ he stated.

Haruna added that the investigation was to determine the circumstances surrounding the use of those credentials and identify any breach of internal access-control protocols before taking appropriate action against anyone involved.

“Preliminary findings from the commission’s audit trail so far, however, indicate that there was no external breach of the CVR database, no hacking incident, and no unauthorised external access to the commission’s ICT infrastructure.

“Rather, the information in question was accessed through valid user credentials assigned to personnel participating in the ongoing CVR exercise but released without authority,’’ the INEC official added.

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