NextGen Day

A legislator has submitted a resolution requesting that the Senate investigate the alleged hack of the Philippine National Police (PNP) and other government organizations’ databases.

Following the publication of a report by VPNMentor, a top cybersecurity research firm, stating that 1,279,437 individuals in the repository of law enforcement agencies, including private information about police employees, had been compromised in an unprecedented data breach, Senator Ramon Revilla Jr. filed Senate Resolution No. 573 on Thursday evening.

VPNMentor reports that 817.54 terabytes of applicant and employee records from numerous state institutions, including the PNP, National Bureau of Investigation (NBI), Bureau of Internal Revenue (BIR), and PNP’s Special Action Force (SAF), have been exposed by the enormous data breach.

“Ang ulat na ito sobrang nakakabahala. (This report is extremely frightening. The involved data is of a sensitive nature. The information in question is extremely sensitive, including fingerprint scans, tax identification numbers, birth certificates, and even passport copies, Revilla said in a statement on Friday.

“If this were to end up in the hands of criminals, it would be very simple for them to use it in fraud and to access other records, like those in banks,” he continued. “Nakadali na sa kanila na gamitin ito sa panloloko at pag-access ng iba pang records katulad ng sa mga bangko.”

Additionally, VPNMentor disclosed that the allegedly compromised papers were kept in a database that was unprotected and unencrypted, making it extremely susceptible to hacker attacks and ransomware.

Revilla emphasized that it is crucial for Congress to promptly use its oversight authority to make sure that current laws on data privacy are strictly adhered to and that data privacy and protection is an issue of national security and interest.

The Data Privacy Act of 2012, Republic Act No. 10173, and other laws are already in place. It can be susunod. It is important to do this. May batas tayo eh. We have a law),” said Revilla.

“Apektado talaga ang national security ng ating bansa dito (This definitely affects our national security). Mas lalo pa dapat natin paigtingin na ligtas ang mga impormasyon na hawak ng ating gobyerno para hindi makompromiso ang taumbayan (we need to further strengthen the security of information held by the government so that the people’s privacy will not be compromised). I therefore urge my Senate colleagues to act quickly to resolve this issue in order to ensure that it does not happen again, he continued.

The Department of Foreign Affairs discovered a data vulnerability in its online passport tracking system in November 2021.

The Commission on Elections only recently disclosed that “60 gigabytes worth of sensitive voter information” and other data had been breached.

A group of hackers had already obtained the personal information of about 54 million registered voters.

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