By Charles Awuzie.
It’s bad news – and also good news. Be patient as I explain.
Yes, the court granted INEC permission to RECONFIGURE BVAS devices.
That’s the bad news.
The court took this decision because INEC filed an affidavit before the court claiming that the information on BVAS can not be tampered with or lost. This is not true. Any Data ‘can’ be ‘tampered’ with.
Unfortunately, the legal team of Peter Obi did NOT challenge this affidavit – and the court let INEC have their way.
I do not know why PO’s legal team didn’t challenge the affidavit but one mind suggests to me that it’s either PO didn’t want to obstruct the March 11th Guber elections which could liberate more states or the legal team trusted INEC’s affidavit.
But there’s good news…
The court granted Peter Obi permission to carry out DIGITAL FORENSICS on INEC’s election materials etc.
If that permission includes carrying out digital forensics on the BVAS system too, then NOTHING IS LOST.
Let me explain…
I’ll speak as Africa’s top Ethical hacker with over 15 years ethical hacking experience under my belt. Reformatting or deleting a file DOES NOT PERMANENTLY REMOVE IT FROM THE storage system. WHAT YOU REMOVED WHEN YOU DELETE A FILE IS THE ‘ENTRY’ for that file and not the file itself. To destroy a file on a system, you will need to PHYSICALLY BURN THE DEVICE TO ASHES OTHERWISE DATA RECOVERY EXPERTS LIKE MYSELF CAN RECOVER SUCH DATA – even from a physically damaged storage system. (Free Tip: this is why I do not give out any phone I used. I flush them down the drain. A brother once called me stingy for flushing used phones but he didn’t know why I do so – to bury whatever was deleted in that phone).
Back to the topic – all Peter Obi needs is the permission of the court to conduct DIGITAL FORENSICS ON BVAS, and we can mobilize a team of data recovery experts to unearth any deleted file on the BVAS even it is reconfigured for the gubernatorial elections. But if the court’s permission doesn’t include digital forensics on BVAS, then I wouldn’t trust whatever data INEC pushes to their so called “back-end server”.
This is why I said that the court ruling was both a bad news and a good news.
All hope is not lost…. Aluta continua.
My name is Charles Awuzie and I lead Africa’s biggest information security company in Johannesburg.
