THE Commission on Elections (Comelec) yesterday assured the public that any hacking attempt on the Online Voting and Counting System (OVCS) that will be piloted during the 2025 overseas voting will fail as it is prepared to thwart any potential attacks on the system.
Speaking to reporters, Comelec chairman George Garcia said the poll body is prepared for the eventuality that the internet voting system to be used by a large majority of overseas voters will get hacking tries.
“The threat of hacking is real. Anybody can be victimized by hacking. We learned our lesson when we got hacked back in 2016. Therefore, we will not allow these hackers to once again become successful,” Garcia said.
Proof of their readiness, the poll chief said, is the repeated unsuccessful tries to hack into the Comelec’s system since the May 2022 polls.
He recalled how there were 35 million attempts to hack into the Precinct Finder application in the Comelec’s website back in the May 2022 polls.
Garcia also related there were three million and 400,000 hacking attempts directed at the Comelec website last December 2023 and April 2024, respectively.
“All these were unsuccessful in their hacking tries,” he said.
Garcia said this is the result of their constant communication and coordination with relevant government agencies, such as the Department Of Information And Communications Technology (DICT) and the National Bureau of Investigation (NBI).
He said they have also been sending their personnel to cyber security schools.
“Our personnel at the Information Technology Department are now highly competitive,” said Garcia.
The Comelec has said that the OVCS will be the primary mode of voting during the 2025 midterm polls, while the personal and postal voting shall be limited to 17 Philippine posts, where there are existing internet voting restrictions.
