The National telecommunications Commission has assured that there will be no hacking of the reslts of the country's first ever automated elections. An NTC official explains this clearly in this manilatimes.net report:

"There’s no way to hack [the results] because it is a private network [that is behind the country’s first automated elections]. The network is encrypted," Edgardo Cabarios, NTC director of common carrier and authorization department, said on Monday.

Cabarios added that even telecommunication companies, or telcos, have no knowledge of the security code of the network.

The election results will be transmitted to the central server of the Commission on Elections (Comelec), municipal canvasser, the server of the dominant minority party and that of the dominant majority party, citizens’ arm and the Kapisanan ng mga Brodkaster ng Pilipinas.

As I wrote in a previous post, hacking the system is not as easy as some people would like us to believe. Even if it were so, there's no way hackers can get away from doing it. Just check out the security features in place:

Security Features

Bar Code. The ballot contains a bar code that guarantees the ballot’s authenticity. If the
bar code is compromised in any way, the ballot will no longer be read by the PCOS. This
will prevent the proliferation of fake ballots that could be used to pad results.

Maximum Number of Ballots. Each PCOS can only count a maximum number of
ballots equal to the number of registered voters plus the BEIs. This will prevent ballot
stuffing as the PCOS will not be able to count ballots beyond the maximum number.

Precinct Based. Since the PCOS is precinct-based, there will be no transportation of
ballots. All the ballots for a given precinct will be counted by the PCOS within the
precinct and the results transmitted directly to the central server and boards of canvassers.
This will prevent ballot snatching and ballot switching.

Paper Based. The PCOS utilizes a paper ballot, so results can be audited by opening the
ballot box and manually counting the ballots. This will be done during the random
manual audit to be conducted by the COMELEC immediately after the elections and
during electoral protests.

Optical Scan. In addition to counting the marks on the ballots, the PCOS also scans each
ballot and stores the image in memory. This provides another layer of auditability in
addition to the paper ballots. This will also ensure the ballots are not tampered with after
they have been cast.

Encryption. Transmissions of results will be encrypted using 128-bit encryption. This
means a total of 2128 possible combinations for the encryption key. A device that could
check a billion-billion keys (1018) per second would still require about 1013 years, which
is longer than the age of the universe.

Access Codes. Each PCOS operator will be given a unique access code that will allow
him/her to operate the PCOS machine. This will prevent unauthorized individuals from
operating the PCOS machines and even prevent authorized individuals from operating
other PCOS machines.

Audit Log. The PCOS machine and the consolidation and canvassing system both
maintain an immutable audit log that tracks all users and actions performed on the
system. This will enable the COMELEC to identify any perpetrators who attempt to
manipulate the system or results.

Transparency. Results will be made available immediately after they are transmitted
from the precinct to the central server. This will allow the public to track the unofficial
results in real-time. While the proclamation might take a few days due to the required
verification of the boards of canvassers, the unofficial results should be complete within a
few hours, which practically eliminates the window for manipulation.

Senatorial candidate Jose De Venecia III, who has been promoting himself as some sort of IT expert following his involvement in the ZTE deal controversy, has been pushing for a source code review. Well, here's his chance. The Commission on Eelections has agreed to have the code reviewed. De Venecia will reportedly do the test himself together with the help of IT volunteers from the Parish Pastoral Council for Responsibel Voting.

De Venecia says there's no more time for a complete test and so they will just do random testing on parts of the code. Apparently, De Venecia agrees that this would be enough. This much I can glean from this quote of his:

(quote lifted from tribuneonline.org report)

"If the review and the Systest results are good, we will most likely get a decent chance for a decent elections," De Venecia said.

A PPCRV IT expert als had this to say:

PPCRV’s IT expert Drexx Lagui who was with De Venecia during the meeting revealed that they would also evaluate the report of Systest Labs on the automated election system as well as look at the voting machines’ "application logic."

The two explained that focusing on the voting will give them an idea on how the PCOS machines will count the votes.

"If the application logic is correct, one plus one is always two and not more or less," Lagui said.

Fair enough. I just hope De Venecia and company will do this test ith the best of intentions, that is to really verify that the system is good t go and not just to cast more doubt on the whole automation project.

I'll be keeping a close watch.