An independent forensic analysis by the East African Data Handlers (EADH) has revealed that there were several successful attempts by several unauthorized individuals who accessed data on the six transmission IEBC servers and even altered it.
The report says that the unauthorized access led to the download of Form 34C, which is a summation of all Form 34B, which contain tallies from each of the 290 constituencies. Forms 34B were to be generated by tallying the results of the presidential election from polling stations through forms 34A.
Form 34C was the one used by Wafula Chebukati, the IEBC chairman, to announce DP William Ruto as the presidential election winner.
EADH reports that there was a backward tallying of the presidential results in which Form 34C was edited several times in order to correspond to forms 34B and 34A.
The analysis reveals that forms 34B and 34A were intercepted and edited too.
“It is obvious the downloading and the translation of Forms 34B and 34C indicates that the process was not forward tallying on the designed tallying chain—46,232 forms 34A create 290 forms 34B and they create the final 34C,” the report says.
The analysis shows that the data seemed to have been working from forms 34C that was seemingly being downloaded into a .csv file, modified or edited, and transmitted.
The EADH reveals that the unauthorized persons were shockingly also able to intercept communication between the KIEMS kits and the presidential tallying center at the Bomas of Kenya, which was so intense that some forms 35 used to tally parliamentary results were found inside the presidential tally servers.
“It seems as though there was a middleware that was intercepting, receiving, and/or sending information between the Kiems kit or the county tallying servers and the presidential tallying server and verification of specific forms,” the report further said, noting that on August 12, one of the IEBC’s servers was accessed remotely using IP address 10.13.0.49 at 12.16 pm.
The connection was disconnected at 1:27 pm and reconnected at 4:13 pm, which was terminated almost immediately and then reconnected at 4:47 pm.
The activities in the serves were made by persons not gazetted as IEBC officials, including Dickson Kwanusu, who on August 14 at 4.29 pm is said to have made an ambiguous and intentional modification to the system to override the whole tallying process in order to generate a Form 34C.
Others include Abdi Hadir Abdi, who did verification of 659 forms 34A, Harun Gathiru, Mohamud Mohamed, and Isaiah Khuyole.
EADH reports that 27 attempts were made to generate Form 34C between August 12 at 3:48 pm and the time the winner was declared on August 15.
The forensic analysis report by EADH corresponded to that of the DCI, which said that the three Venezuelans — Salvador Javier, Jose Gregorio and Joel Gustavo — arrested on July 21, also had had access to the IEBC servers before, during, and after the polls.
Sam Oduor is the founder and one of the editors at WKT. With a strong background in Communication and Journalism, Sam is an experienced digital media expert currently building a team of young professionals dedicated to telling the story of our community in a unique, authentic way.
