Philippine military probes reported breach of its database

MANILA, Philippines — The Armed Forces of the Philippines (AFP) is looking into the reported intrusion of its database that leaked information of thousands of its military personnel.

Pinoy LulzSec claimed it hacked several websites of the government, including the Philippine Army’s, and private firms as an April Fool’s joke on Monday. It said it was able to access basic files for 20,000 soldiers. 

The same hacking group exposed records of millions of registered Filipino voters in 2016. 

‘Not hacked’

But Army spokesperson Lt. Col. Ramon Zagala denied their database was hacked and said the information obtained were from exposed dump files of an old database.

“Contrary to what has been reported, the Philippine Army Network was not hacked by a certain group known as Pinoy Lulszec, who is somehow vying for attention. The data extracted came from exposed dump files of an old database that was being migrated from a third party Internet Service Provider to the Philippine Army Network in December 2018,” he told reporters.

He said the issue was already addressed as early as January 1, 2019 but LulzSec made it appear that the supposed hacking was carried out on April 1. 

Nonetheless, Zagala said they are investigating how the hackers were able to access the information.

“Rest assured that all other data in our network is secured and that further security assessments are being done to prevent a repeat of this incident,” he said./kga