COMELEC hack exposes 55M voters information to fraud and other risks

It seems that the hacking of Commission on Elections (COMELEC) website is more concerning that we initially thought.

comelec-anonymous

Just last month, COMELEC’s website was defaced by a group of hackers and has called for their attention to speak out about the upcoming national elections. Afterwards, another group has leaked COMELEC’s entire database online which is considered as the biggest breach of any government data comprising personal information of 55 million registered voters according to a report by Trend Micro.

Although the election governing body claimed that there is no sensitive data involved, Trend Micro’s research says otherwise. They revealed that OFW’s passport details are exposed to the public for easy access plus 15.8 million of fingerprints and list of people dating back to the 2010 elections. What’s alarming is they are just stored in plain text files without any encryption or security.

This information could be used for fraud, phishing, blackmail, and even extortion. You may read about the full report here.

Daniel Morial

This article was contributed by Daniel Morial, a film school graduate and technology enthusiast. He's the geeky encyclopedia and salesman among his friends for anything tech.

http://www.yugatech.com

7 Comments

asakasdiuhuidq213 says:

9 years ago

alarming naman talaga yun ever since. dump is terabyte. ano pa ba magiging laman nun.
- Reply
Kambing Marcus says:

9 years ago

alarming kase walang alam ang taga comelec… lol
- Reply
Zaq says:

9 years ago

Lowest bidder. You get what you pay for.
- Reply
the other says:

9 years ago

Any registered pinoy voter can be a victim of scams, identity theft, stalking or even kidnappings depending on where he or she lives. Be careful and vigilant in social media as well as meeting new people face to face for the first time.
- Reply
bernx says:

9 years ago

Nowadays data breaches are epidemic, it happens in school and universities, telecom companies, and government institutions; but what happened in Comelec is really worrisome, particularly if the number of data is true, it would be practically everyone’s private information and taking into account its sensitivity, including its biometric data, the fateful implication is nothing less than huge.
- Reply
Xntr says:

9 years ago

How secure. Probably they can also add, modify or delete records. How cool is that? Baka pati boto pwde manipulate. Hmmm…
- Reply
gloomnomad says:

9 years ago

It includes also the personal information of corrupt politicians and other members of oligarch families which can be used against them. Information is power.
- Reply