Cyberattack against the Philippine electoral commission
For the data breach associated with the Commission on Elections in 2022, see 2022 Philippine general election § Smartmatic data breach.
Commission on Elections data breach
Date
March 27, 2016 (2016-03-27)
Location
Philippines
Type
Cyber-attack
Participants
Anonymous Philippines LulzSec Pilipinas
Outcome
Around 55 million registered voters at risk
Biggest private data leak in Philippine history
Arrests
Paul Biteng (arrested on April 20) Joenel de Asis (arrested on April 28)
On March 27, 2016, hackers under the banner "Anonymous Philippines" hacked into the website of the Philippine Commission on Elections (COMELEC) and defaced it. The hackers left a message calling for tighter security measures on the vote counting machines (VCM) to be used during the 2016 Philippine general election on May 9.[1] Within the day a separate group of hackers, LulzSec Pilipinas posted an online link to what it claims to be the entire database of COMELEC and updated the post to include three mirror link to the index of the database's downloadable files.[2] The leaked files by LulzSec Pilipinas amounts to 340 gigabytes.[3]
The COMELEC website returned to normal at 03:15 (PST) on 28 March 2016. COMELEC spokesperson, James Jimenez, stated on his Twitter account that, as they continue to scour the site, all databases would remain temporarily off.[4]
The incident was considered the biggest private data leak in the Philippine history and leaving millions of registered voters at risk.[5][6]
55 million registered voters are at risk due to the data breach according to security firm, Trend Micro potentially surpassing the Office of Personnel Management data breach which affected 20 million people.[7]
A searchable website, called wehaveyourdata, was set up containing sensitive data on Filipino registered voters was set up as early as April 21. The website was taken down with the assistance of the U.S. Department of Justice since the domain of the website was bought from a US-based web hosting company. The website itself was found to be hosted in Russia.[8]
^"Massive data breach exposes all Philippines voters". Telecom Asia. 12 April 2016. Retrieved 21 April 2016.
^Bueza, Michael; Manuel, Wayne (2 April 2016). "Experts fear identity theft, scams due to Comelec leak". Rappler. Retrieved 21 April 2016.
^Cite error: The named reference trendmicro was invoked but never defined (see the help page).
^"Comelec website back to normal after hacking". GMA News. 28 March 2016. Retrieved 29 March 2016.
^"Experts fear identity theft, scams due to Comelec leak". 1 April 2016. Retrieved 21 April 2016.
^"'COMELEAKS' Lawmakers: Voter database breach compromises May 9 elections; PNP joins probe". Interaksyon. 22 April 2016. Archived from the original on 23 April 2016. Retrieved 22 April 2016.
^Kennedy, John (11 April 2016). "Every one of the Philippines' 55m voters could be in danger of fraud". Silicon Republic. Retrieved 21 April 2016.
^"Searchable website with hacked data taken down – Comelec". CNN Philippines. 22 April 2016. Archived from the original on 23 April 2016. Retrieved 22 April 2016.
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