By Ferdinand G. Patinio
MANILA, Oct. 8 (PNA) — Smartmatic – Total Information Management (TIM) Corp. assures that the local source code review will not make it vulnerable to hackers.
“What the guys will know is how things are done. But the tools that we use, like the encryption for securing the system, they won’t know it,” said Smartmatic-TIM Project Manager Marlon Garcia during the local source review briefing held at the De La Salle University in Manila on Thursday.
He noted that they are prepared on such attempt, noting that they installed layers of security features for all the aspects of the AES to ensure that the system will be protected.
“That is impossible for any hacker in the world to hack in the system. The system cannot be hacked even with the knowledge they acquire here,” Garcia added.
The Smartmatic-TIM official said that firewalls and filters for the consolidation and canvassing system (CCS) had been placed along the network to ensure that the transmitted results would be protected.
He said that each unit of voting counting machines would not be connected to a network until it was already set for transmission of results.
“You cannot be over confident about it. We always put into place all the regular measures that are required and for every election,” Garcia said.
The source code review has two phases, the first one involves the baseline source codes while the second one being the customized and configured source code.
It will both involve the source codes of the vote counting machines; consolidated canvassing system; and election management system.
Nine groups were allowed to conduct the source code review, including political parties Liberal Party (LP), United Nationalist Alliance (UNA), Nationalist People’s Coalition (NPC), Unang Sigaw (Nueva Ecija local party), Bagumbayan Party, and Lakas–CMD as well as Parish Pastoral Council for Responsible Voting (PPCRV), and Centre for People Empowerment in Governance (CenPEG), and the DLSU for being the host.
The actual source code review will start on Oct. 12.
Section 12 of the RA 9369 states that the commission shall “promptly make the source code available and open to any interested party or group, which may conduct their own review”.
The source code is the human readable instructions that dictate what the automated election system will do. (PNA)