MANILA – The Commission on Elections (Comelec) said that the National Bureau of Investigation (NBI) has started dismantling websites that carry or claim to have a data base of voters list, which was hacked earlier from Comelec.
Comelec Spokesperson James Jimenez said that they already referred to the authorities as to the dismantling of these sites.
“We referred to the NBI to take down sites. Aware tayo sa ramifications ng data base na kinalat na nila nuon pa… we were already taking down various sites that claimed to have a copy of the data base dahil alam namin na delikado ishare ‘yan,” he said.
With this, Jimenez noted that as they were working to take down the sites, they were informing the public about the possible dangers they might be exposed to because of the unauthorized release of the said data by trying to follow these practical solutions: recommend to change their password immediately and call their bank or credit card company and inform them that they might be part of the leak.
“We have those solutions out there, we are also taking steps to make sure that the website that we are going to put up again will be safe,” he added.
At the same, Jimenez apologize anew for this unfortunate event.
“We apologized for this attack on your privacy…We acknowledge that we have the responsibility to safeguard the data, and we regret that this has happened, that’s why we are making sure to take steps… and we are hoping to make sure that this will not happen again,” the poll body official said.
At the same time, Jimenez said that they were also conducting internal investigation if there were employees involved and how the hackers were able to infiltrate their system.
“Kung kasama comelec employees malalaman natin in due time. Internally the Comelec is also looking at the possibility on conducting how it happened. Weakness that could have been avoided,” he added.
Meanwhile, vice presidential candidate Senator Ferdinand “Bongbong” Marcos Jr. was apprehensive over the reported hacking of the voters’ list from the Comelec website as the incident puts the credibility of the elections on the line.
With this, he noted that the poll body should treat the incident as a very serious matter because it did not only affect the credibility of the elections but the safety and security of every Filipino voter.
“The Comelec should treat this as a dangerous security breach because voters’ data are made accessible to the public,” Marcos said.
On Thursday, the website wehaveyourdata.com uploaded what appears to be the details about the registered voters from the Comelec website.
The said website uploaded the hacked voters’ list as it lets anyone search for any names listed in the database from Comelec. The data included birth dates, fingerprints, passport details and addresses among other information.