Data Privacy and Information Security specialist, Desmond Israel says even though voting in the upcoming general election will be done offline, the country is not immune to electoral interference.

According to him, cyber attackers can influence elections through disinformation and manipulation tactics.

He notes that while Ghana's elections - voting, counting, and collation are 100% manual, cyber attackers can still target political campaign activities and exploit weaknesses in the infrastructure of political parties, particularly by focusing on key figures like presidential candidates.

Read also: Election 2024: Offline voting solves 70% of electoral interference issues – Data Privacy expert

Speaking on Joy FM’s Super Morning Show on Thursday, Mr Israel outlined how attackers could penetrate candidates' digital communications, including emails and social media accounts, to gather compromising information.

He compared these tactics to those used during the 2016 U.S. election, where troll factories were employed to manipulate public perceptions.

According to him, through the deployment of bots and by creating fake accounts, attackers can inflate a candidate's perceived popularity on social media, giving the illusion of widespread support.

“An attacker can set up a troll factory like they did with the USA ahead of their 2016 election and make presidential candidates believe that you have a strong grassroots base. So the attacker would set up bots and make them represent as though you have a stronger grassroots base so this will add up to your numbers on social media and be making a lot of noise about you. So you will think you have grown in numbers when in actual fact it is dwindling, then they bring in the ‘kill’,” he explained.

Mr Israel warned that this false sense of popularity can be detrimental, especially when coupled with fake news, misinformation and disinformation.

“Once they bring in the kill, they have achieved two things from cyber, they give you that false hope that you have a high number on social media when it is the complete opposite, and then they drop the bombshell from whatever they found on you from whatever electronic medium that they hacked.

“And once this gets in the picture, it destroys everything because now there is public outrage against you,” he stated.

This combination, he stressed, is one of the modus operandi that attackers can use to severely damage a candidate’s reputation just before an election, leading to unexpected losses.

“You may be the best candidate everybody would be rooting for, but a week to the election, you lost so much, and on the final day, it affects the outcome. And this can constitute election interference,” he stated.