Vivendi's 'hacked' vote probably not hacked at all...

Security experts are casting doubt on Vivendi's claims that its shareholder vote was tampered with by hackers.

The vote on its stock option plan was declared invalid after CEO Jean-Marie Messier refused to accept the results, claiming hackers had interfered with the data.

But security experts have now brought Vivendi's claims into question, saying sabotaging an e-voting system is very difficult.

Richard Hollis, managing director of security consultancy Orthus, said: "Technically, it's a fairly simple process to crack into an unsecured wireless system, but it's an extremely risky business as the crackers need to operate within range of the system using their own equipment. It would be extremely cumbersome to monitor and manipulate over 5,000 votes in real-time."

He added: "[A hacker] would have to wait until the votes were tallied and then attack the system they were stored on to manipulate the results. But that requires intimate working knowledge of the system not available in the short window of a drive-by hack."

The CEO of Vivendi Jean-Marie Messier is featured in silicon.com's Agenda Setters 2002 survey. To read more about this, see: www.silicon.com/as2002

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