THE official Facebook page of the Philippine Coast Guard (PCG) was hacked last Monday, affecting the agency’s dissemination of vital information to the public.
As of yesterday, the PCG said efforts were still underway to regain control of its Facebook page from the “unknown entity” that gained access to the agency’s social media account at around 6 p.m. last Monday.
The unknown entity has posted seven short videos on the PCG’s social media page, the last at around 4:30 p.m. yesterday.
The PCG made its last post on its Facebook page at 10 a.m. Monday, involving a maritime incident that occurred in Atimonan, Quezon last Sunday.
The Coast Guard Public Affairs Service (CGPAS), which is handling the PCG’s Facebook page, has already coordinated with Meta, the parent company of Facebook, and “provided needed details to regain page access.”
“As of press time, the CGPAS continues its active recovery efforts with Meta,” the PCG said in a statement.
“After initial consultation with the Philippine National Police (PNP) Anti-Cybercrime Group, the CGPAS considers the possibility of online security breach through malware (malicious software),” the PCG also said.
The CGPAS is set to meet with the Coast Guard Weapons, Communications, Electronics and Information System Command “to conduct backend operations for page recovery.”
Last February 15, the PCG briefly lost control of its X (formerly Twitter). The PCG’s X account was used to like and repost cryptocurrency-related posts while it was out of the PCG control.
Last month, the PCG received information from the Department of Information and Communication Technology about the hacking of the PCG website.
Upon review, the PCG confirmed that no hacking activity was observed on its website.