Infected e-voting tablets halt Julau polling results
KUALA LUMPUR: The PKR Central Election Committee has suspended the Julau division results in the PKR election until the infected tablet devices used for voting are restored and data integration process can be carried out.
Committee chairman Datuk Rashid Din was non-committal when asked on when the results could be announced.
“We will update you on Monday (tomorrow),” he told the New Straits Times Press.
In a statement, he said the party was investigating if the incident also affected other divisions where voting was being conducted.
He said investigations found that the Prey Anti-Theft software had been installed in the central committee’s e-voting tablets that were allocated for the divisional polls yesterday around 4am.
Rashid said the issue was detected by the Systems and Information Technology unit under the committee at 2pm, when the e-voting system malfunctioned.
“After the checks, we found that 10 e-voting tablets that were used at the time were infected by the software.
“Reports were then sent to the cybersecurity team in Petaling Jaya. They found that the software was meant to erase the evoting application in the tablet, steal data and change passwords, and to control the tablets by using remote computers,” he added.
Rashid said the unit would be addressing the problem by changing the voting mode to offline and by shutting down the device administrator privilege, as well as uninstalling the antitheft application.
The Julau polls have been plagued with controversy due to 12,946 new names incorporated into the party records on June 27, marking a 2,147 per cent increase from the day before.
However, PKR secretary-general Datuk Seri Saifuddin Nasution Ismail claimed that its records for the division in Sarawak were above board and approved by the party’s political bureau and central leadership council.
He disputed claims that the addresses of about 11,000 members were suspicious and instead suggested the portal that exposed the matter had sighted an inaccurate copy of the membership records.
Saifuddin did not address the mounting news coverage by Sarawak media on people claiming they were registered as Julau PKR division members without their knowledge.