Former CNE auditor: Attack on the electoral body's portal had a volume that we cannot combat in the country

Published at: 05/08/2024 04:44 PM

There have been many theories that the extreme right has tried to position before public opinion to justify the thesis of an alleged electoral fraud on July 28, however they have no basis, according to the computer professor at the Simón Bolívar University (USB), Víctor Theoktisto.

In an interview with the radio station Alba Ciudad, the professor, who participated in audits of the voting system in 2021 and 2024, pointed out that the system's security schemes are “ridiculously exaggerated”, because it includes algorithms in several layers that “if someone wanted to decrypt or modify the information transmitted through them, they would have to use extremely powerful computers for about 400 years”.

Also, despite not having further details about the computer attacks suffered by the CNE's IT infrastructure last 28-J, Theoktisto theorized about the attacks suffered by the Electoral Power.

He pointed out that in order to slow down the system of counting votes, the attackers could have used a series of technologies to prevent “calls” from falling and prevent the transmission of data over the telephone lines of the “dead network”.

“Another theory is that, perhaps, the attackers made hundreds or thousands of calls to the telephone numbers of the totalization centers, temporarily occupying the lines and thus preventing electoral machines from being able to connect,” he said, while stressing that voting data travels through a network other than the Internet.

On the other hand, he stated that the CNE web portal received significant denial of service (DDoS) attacks in which hackers coordinate hundreds or thousands of computers on the Internet to send traffic and requests to a specific web page, causing it to collapse.

In this regard, he explained that part of the attack carried out from outside had as its last exit point the Republic of North Macedonia, but “we know that this was only a bridge for VPNs from other sides”, that is, the attackers were probably in another country, but they used VPN networks or seized computers from North Macedonia to carry out the attack.

He also assured that to carry out an attack of this level, he had to have the support of an enemy government of Venezuela, since it had “a volume that we simply cannot combat in the country.”

Mazo News Team