- The person in charge of technical aspects and security protection had said during an audit prior to the elections that the CANTV network was isolated to prevent external attacks.
Before the president of the National Electoral Council (CNE), Elvis Amoroso, denounced that the presidential elections were compromised by a cyberattack perpetrated from North Macedonia, the body itself had stated that its system was “protected” against this type of action. This was reported in different media outlets, and even on the website of the United Socialist Party of Venezuela (PSUV) in the days leading up to the elections, the result of which is currently the subject of controversy.
On July 15, 2024, the audit of the electoral technological infrastructure and production of voting machines was carried out, in a public event held in front of the technicians of the different political parties and broadcast on YouTube. According to the official newspaper CCS Citythe person responsible for technical aspects and security protection of the CNE, Carlos Hernánez, assured there that the CANTV network used by the electoral system was isolated to prevent external access to the servers.
“This network will be completely isolated, we have no communication with the rest of the world; the CANTV network is assigned solely for this purpose on the day of the event,” he explained when asked about the possibility that the operating system could suffer some kind of hacking.
Protected
At the time, The newspaper public a verification denying that CANTV’s Internet service would operate only for the CNE on July 28, election day. Hernández’s explanation was mentioned there, clarifying that the CNE will have a private network provided by the state telecommunications company, and which would be reinforced to improve its security.
According to the official newspaper See DiaryThe CNE technician said that the servers are configured so that their ports do not communicate with each other, and that there are mechanisms in place so that only authorized users can access them. In the event of an irregularity, the system issues an alarm. He added that the servers are closely monitored by specialized personnel who monitor any potential failure in the software.
“The machines transmit through a private network of Cantv-Movilnet-CNE. The totaling system is also isolated from the outside world,” said the journalist specializing in electoral issues Eugenio Martínez on his X account (formerly Twitter).
Vulnerable
Hours after the polling stations closed, the main witness of the Unitary Platform, Delsa Solórzano, denounced that the CNE had stopped the transmission of the voting records when the opposition had barely received 30% of the votes counted. She indicated that the organization also did not allow her to enter the headquarters to be in the counting room as established by law.
The CNE remained silent until dawn, when it finally issued its first bulletin attributing the victory to Nicolás Maduro. There, the president of the CNE, Elvis Amoroso, assured that the system had suffered “a massive hack” that delayed the transmission of the minutes, with 80% of the tables counted at the time of his announcement. It should be noted that, contrary to what Amoroso said, the results of that first bulletin were not irreversible, since the difference between Maduro and González was 704,114 votes, when in the 20% of tables to be counted more than 2.4 million votes were still at stake.
A day after the results, the government’s attorney general, Tarek William Saab, reported on an alleged distributed denial of service (DDoS) attack against the electoral system. This attack was allegedly carried out from North Macedonia, and its apparent masterminds were opposition leaders such as Leopoldo López, María Corina Machado and Lester Toledo.
The “attack” would also have affected the CNE website, which has been down since July 28. This has prevented the publication of the results of the first bulletin broken down by center and voting table, which has increased doubts in the international community about the numbers given by Amoroso, as there is no way to support them.
Disputed
The government of North Macedonia was pronounced On July 30, the Venezuelan government issued a statement denying Saab’s statements, saying it had not received any request from Venezuela to investigate the alleged cyberattack. It added that it would closely monitor the case to prevent any of its citizens from being subjected to potential unfounded accusations.
“The Ministry of the Interior informs the public that the Department of Cybercrime is following the development of the alleged accusations against Macedonian citizens and we also declare that so far, the Venezuelan authorities have not sent any requests or information on the above for further checks on our part,” he said.
Macedonian Minister for Digital Transformation Stefan Andonovski said that if the attack is true, it probably came from a device with an IP address disguised by a virtual private network (VPN) or a botnet. He also theorized about a possible infection with a computer virus or malware, although he did not rule out the possibility that it was a false accusation created by the Venezuelan government.
“This is a socialist regime that for years has often leaked information not supported by evidence and blamed interested parties and states that bear no responsibility in such cases,” he said.
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2024-08-01 14:13:11
