DSS Accuses APC of Attempting To Hack Into INEC Data Base

Posted by African Examiner Featured, Latest Headlines, Nigeria 2015 Election Wednesday, January 7th, 2015

*APC Describes Findings “Flimsy, Premeditated, Partisan”

From Mustapha Abdul, Ayo Afolabi, Abuja – After the recent invasion of its Lagos membership data office, the State Security Services, (SSS) has finally nailed the opposition All Progressives Congress (APC), declaring it had uncovered lists, containing names and photographs of security personnel, foreigners and under-aged on its registered members list.

Deputy Director, Public Relations, DSS, Ms Marilyn Ogar

SSS Spokesperson, Marilyn Ogar, made the revelation Wednesday in FCT Abuja at a press conference.

She said the security had with it, a video with tutorials on hacking, while she displayed the lists and other items recovered from the opposition Lagos data office to the journalists.

Ogar unraveled that the video of 21 hacking tutorials, a temporary voter card, Permanent Voter Cards (PVCs) were recovered.

She similarly said the video focused on how to become a hacker and steps to avoid detection in the process of hacking web services.

Other steps in her narration included: procedures of system hacking, passwords cracking, decrypting, escalating access privileges and creating backdoors to servers. The tutorial she also disclosed explained how to evade security of database such as Intrusion Detection Systems (IDS), firewalls and other measures put in place to deter backers.

Speaking further, Ogar informed that the alleged video outlined ways to identify vulnerabilities in systems, how to cleverly drop a USB flash drive in a target establishment, while she followed that when the drive was plugged into any computer, it could transmit malicious codes enough to gain “access into and compromise the entire system of the target organisation’’.

She went on to accuse that the video explained how to hack into the systems of media houses with the aim of broadcasting fake stories or headlines.

Aside that, Ogar indicated that SSS personnel recovered during the raiding in APC Ikeja office, completed forms by the party without passport photographs, books containing names of people with phone numbers and many envelopes containing passport photographs.

The SSS mouthpiece established it suspected that the APC had sinister plot to illegally inflate the number of its members, affirming, “we suspect that there was an elaborate and well-articulated plan to inflate the party’s membership data as well as hack into INEC’s voter registration database.

The alleged plot according to her was done through the creation of the party’s membership forms and cards to match INEC’s voters register across the country.

Ogar finally confirmed that the suspect data staffers of the opposition have been prosecuted, yet investigations have begun. She also disclosed that the identities of those found on the party fake registers have been forwarded to the security agencies.

APC Describes Findings “flimsy, premeditated, Partisan”

Meanwhile, the All Progressives Congress (APC) has dismissed as hogwash the so-called findings of the DSS following its Gestapo-like raid on the party’s offices in Lagos, saying the ‘findings’ presented to the media by the agency on Wednesday is a great disservice to Nigeria and an embarrassment to all intelligence-gathering organizations around the world.

In a statement issued in Abuja on Wednesday by its National Publicity Secretary, Alhaji Lai Mohammed, the party also described the timing of the release of the ‘findings’ as a plot orchestrated in collusion with the PDP to distract the APC from its ongoing campaigns for next month’s elections.

It described as disingenuous, flimsy, premeditated, partisan and an irritant the conclusion that the APC had an ”articulated plan to inflate the party’s membership data as well as hack into INEC’s voter registration database through the creation of party membership forms and cards to match INEC’s voters register across the country”.

”First the DSS and the PDP said the APC was cloning Permanent Voters Cards at the raided office, without a shred of evidence. Now, after a ‘painstaking’ investigation, the DSS has found out that the APC was only planning to inflate its membership data and then hack into INEC’s database. And this is the outcome of its massive, months-long investigations?

”This would have been funny if it were not from a primary domestic intelligence agency saddled with a great responsibility. Can this wishy-washy report stand any serious scrutiny? Can any serious intelligence gathering agency anywhere else in the world take this report seriously?

“With these kind of findings, one can now understand why Boko Haram has continued to strike at times and places of its own choosing without any prior knowledge”, the statement said.