Kenyans, mostly opposition coalition NASA’s supporters, took to social media to laugh off French IT firm OT-Morpho’s Friday report that their audit showed IEBC servers were not hacked. IEBC had contracted OT-Morpho to supply the election results transmission system. Tweeting under the #MorphoExposed hashtag, they raised various issues thought to be indicative that IEBC servers were compromised.
The memo IEBC chairman Wafula Chebukati wrote to CEO Ezra Chiloba also contained information that confirmed that indeed the servers were hacked. For instance, Chebukati wanted Chiloba to explain why his (Chebukati’s) account was illegally used to access the server and execute 9,934 transactions.
Chebukati also queried why KIEMS devices’ GPRS and Geo-fencing features were turned off 3 days to the election. Disabling these location identifying features confounded earlier opposition allegations that they had information several devices were transmitting results from the same location in Nairobi. Allegedly, the location did not fall into any of the gazetted IEBC polling stations.
Opposition supporters queried how OT-Morpho carried out the audit while IEBC is yet to open the servers. They also cast doubts over the transparency of the auditing exercise (if any took place) given the firm did not invite NASA and Jubilee representatives to witness or participate in the auditing exercise.
A little digging around shows that OT-Morpho is part of Oberthur Technologies. The latter is a sister company to Oberthur Fiducaire, which was adversely mentioned in the Anglo-Leasing scandal that rocked the country in former president Mwai Kibaki’s era. The fictitious Anglo Leasing and Finance Ltd company had sub-contracted Oberthur Fiducaire to install an immigration security document control system.
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NASA flag bearer Raila Odinga is yet to change his earlier challenge that he will concede defeat if IEBC agrees to open their servers for a full audit. IEBC’s reluctance to have its servers fully audited in the presence of Jubilee and NASA representatives also compounds doubts that the servers may have been tampered with.
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