The presidential candidate of the African Democratic Congress (ADC), Atiku Abubakar, has warned that the continued use of an outdated operating system on the Bimodal Voter Accreditation System (BVAS) could expose the 2027 general elections to cyberattacks and manipulation.....KINDLY READ THE FULL STORY HERE▶
Atiku raised the concern in a statement issued by his media office in Abuja on Tuesday, following failures recorded during the mock accreditation exercise in Osun State on August 1.
He also cited a disclosure by the Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC) Director of ICT, Dr Lawrence Bayode, who reportedly said during an interview on Arise TV that the BVAS, first deployed in 2021, was still operating on Android version 10.
Naija News understands that Android 10 reached end of life in 2023 and no longer receives security updates.
Atiku said the continued use of the obsolete operating system on a critical election technology platform posed “severe cyber and operational risks.”
He questioned why INEC, despite its substantial budget, had failed to upgrade the software ahead of the 2027 elections or test a newer operating system during recent off-season elections, including the Osun governorship poll.
The former Vice President described the commission’s handling of the issue as suspicious, alleging that it could amount to “a deliberate attempt to subvert the integrity of the country’s elections.”
According to Atiku, the vulnerability could enable “criminal elements or hackers to bypass the BVAS application entirely, gain root access to the device file system, and potentially alter cached voter logs or polling unit result files before they are transmitted.”
He also expressed concern about the transmission of election results, noting that BVAS devices rely on public telecommunication networks to transmit data to the INEC Result Viewing portal.
Atiku warned that outdated cryptographic protections could increase the risk of Man-in-the-Middle attacks, through which “sophisticated actors could intercept, block, or manipulate data packets over the air.”
The ADC candidate further raised concerns about the biometric functions of the devices, saying an outdated operating system could compromise their accuracy and resilience.
He said the situation could result in “reducing the system’s accuracy and resilience against spoofing methods such as fingerprint and photo bypasses.”
Atiku also warned that “bugs or memory leaks within legacy system frameworks can cause the app to crash during peak voting hours,” potentially resulting in the type of technical glitches and accreditation delays recorded in previous elections.
Citing cybersecurity experts, the former Vice President said, “running critical national infrastructure on an end-of-life operating system creates a broad attack surface.”
He consequently called for an independent and comprehensive audit of the BVAS devices, describing the exercise as “vital to safeguard election integrity.”
Atiku urged INEC to urgently address the identified vulnerabilities ahead of the 2027 general elections.
