Botomoto talks with Smartimatic-TIM Spokesman Gene Gregorio regarding the hacking of the Tesda website and the possiblity of hacking the AES

Botomoto happened to run into Smartmatic-TIM spokesman Gene Gregorio at Times Plaza and with the spate of news going around about government websites being hacked, we were able to ask him about the possibility of the AES being hacked.

Gregorio pointed out that a differentiation has to be made between the election websites and the automated election system that will be implemented.

The automated election system is protected by multiple layers of security and it will be online only during the transmission of electoral results from the 82,000 precincts.  Hacking the results of just one precinct, because of its 128 bit encryption system, will take 50 years to decode.  Hacking into the central servers is virtually impossible and the servers cannot be fed hacked data as it only accepts data from specific PCOS machines.

The election websites (which will display the election results from the Automated election systems)  are also clad with security features and mirror or back up sites have been set up, so that if anything goes wrong with any of the election websites another website can immediately be put up to take its place.

What is shocking is that Gregorio said that their security experts have tipped them off that certain people associated with hacking syndicates are using news of the government website hackings to claim that they can hack the automated polling system.

"We've just been made aware of this racket and would like to warn the public, especially candidates, to beware of this.  We were told that some people are asking for millions so that they can assure results come election day and they have claimed to have perpetrated the hacking of government websites as proof that they can hack the automated polling system.  The automated polling system is virtually unhackable and there are multiple layers of assuring that the votes cast nationwide will be counted accurately," said Gregorio.