THE hackers group Anonymous Philippines hacked the official website of the Commission on Elections more than a month before the national and local elections on May 9.
Just before midnight on Sunday, the group defaced the poll body’s website (www.comelec.gov.oh) and demanded that it make sure the security features of the vote-counting machines would be there on Election Day.
“What happens when the electoral process is so mired with questions and controversies?” The hacker named “Anonymous” wrote.
“Can the government still guarantee that the sovereignty of the people is upheld? We request the implementation of the security features on the PCOS [Precinct Count Optical Scan] machines.”
The group said it will watch how the Comelec will conduct the elections.
“Commission on Elections, we are watching! We are Anonymous. We are legion. We do not forgive. We do not forget. Expect us!” the hacker said.
Meanwhile, the Comelec failed to file a resolution transferring the 352 clustered precincts to 86 shopping malls as the law only allows the poll body to make changes in the polling precincts 45 days before the May 9 elections, a source said.
The source warned that the Comelec may antedate the resolution to make it appear that it met the requirement that resolutions should be passed 45 days before the elections.
On Monday, another group called “LulzSec” accessed the data of the poll body’s website and posted it publicly online.
“A great lol to Commission on Elections, here’s your whoooooole database,” LulzSec Pilipinas wrote in a facebook post.
It was the first major open leak of elections-related data by a hacker group in the Philippines.
The hackers exposed voter data, voter registration data, and databases relevant to the functionality of the website.
On Monday afternoon, the hacker posted three mirror links to an index of files that could be downloaded.
These files are “the whole database leak of Commission on Elections.”
“Some of the tables are encrypted by Comelec [it has[ the algo[rithms] to decrypt the data,” the hacker said,
The files include comweb.sql.qz, a 312GB archive file.
The hacking and defacing come just days after the Supreme Court affirmed its order for the poll body to produce voter receipts on Election Day to serve as the Voter Verified Paper Audit Trail as required by the Poll Automation Law.
The hackers’ group said it was imperative that the Comelec ensure the credibility of the elections as it was the prime opportunity for the Filipinos to exercise their sovereignty over the government.
“One of the processes by which people exercise their sovereignty is through voting in an elections, where people choose the candidates who will best represent them, who will serve them under the principle that public office is a public trust,” Anonymous said. Sara Susanne D. Fabunan
Comelec spokesman James Jimenez said the agency could protect the voters on May 9 despite the hacking of their website.
He assured the voters that the information in their website does not contain any sensitive information that will affect the votes of the voters.
He said the security for its website “is not as tight” compared to the voting process that it really needed to secure “come hell or high water”.
He said, the Comelec will use a different website during Election Day on the poll result reporting.