The Independent National Electoral Commission, INEC has began investigation into allegations of unauthorised access and disclosure of information from its Continuous Voter Registration, CVR database.
The Commission disclosed this in a statement issued by its National Commissioner and Chairman of Information and Voter Education Committee, Mohammed Haruna.
The investigation follows social media reports claiming that the voter data of a candidate in the recent Federal Capital Territory, FCT political party primaries was leaked, using official access credentials.
Haruna says 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 explains that as part of the ongoing CVR exercise nationwide, authorised INEC Registration Officers were granted controlled access to specific components of the CVR system to enable them register new applicants, process requests for transfer of registration and update voter records, where necessary and such access was restricted to official duties only and withdrawn at the conclusion of the exercise.
Haruna, however, says that the audit trail from the preliminary investigation had enabled the Commission to identify the user-account through which the information was accessed.
The INEC commissioner 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.
Haruna said that the incident under investigation related to the retrieval of a specific voter record and didn’t indicate any compromise of the Commission’s broader voter registration infrastructure or the personal data of more than 90 million registered voters.
While the National Commissioner discloses that the Department of State Services, DSS on its own accord, commenced an independent investigation into the matter, it promises to cooperate fully with all relevant security agencies and would not hesitate to refer any person found culpable for appropriate legal action.
(Editor: Terverr Tyav)
