THE National Movement for Free Elections (Namfrel) yesterday asked the Commission on Elections (Comelec) to hasten its probe on the alleged hacking of its server.
“The automated election system (AES) is a mission-critical system, and any reported incident of hacking into the AES must be quickly responded to,” said the poll watchdog.
Comelec spokesman James Jimenez on Tuesday said the poll body’s findings on the reported hacking will be out this week. Initially, he said the Comelec has yet to find evidence of data breach and hacking in their system.
Last Monday, the Manila Bulletin’s Technews team released a report saying the Comelec server has been hacked but without verification from the poll body.
Politicians and several groups have called for an investigation on the alleged data breach.
Namfrel said regardless of the outcome of its probe, the Comelec should set up an incident response team “whose primary responsibility includes developing a proactive incident response plan, conducting vulnerability assessment of the Comelec’s technology infrastructure, including the AES, resolving system vulnerabilities, implementing strong information security practices, and addressing information security incidents.”
The National Privacy Commission has called the Comelec and the newspaper to a meeting.
