Philippine Coast Guard spokesperson Rear Adm. Armand Balilo (INQUIRER FILE PHOTO)
MANILA, Philippines — The Philippine Coast Guard (PCG) regained complete control of its official Facebook account on Tuesday, according to the agency.
Quoting PCG spokesperson Rear Adm. Armand Balilo, the agency said the Coast Guard Public Affairs Service (CGPAS) recovered full access to the account around 9 a.m.
READ: Hackers break into Coast Guard’s Facebook page anew
PCG’s Facebook account was hacked by an “unknown entity” around 12:30 p.m. last Friday (March 29).
Since then, PCG’s page featured posts of short clips from various movies.
“The CGPAS coordinated with the Cybercrime Investigation and Coordinating Center under the Department of Information and Communications Technology (DICT) and Meta to conduct back-end operations and assess the security breach,” the agency said in a statement.
“The CGPAS is also set to conduct another hardware check with IT experts from the Armed Forces of the Philippines to strengthen its cybersecurity measures,” it added.
The hacking was the fourth cyberattack against the PCG this year.
The last incident was monitored on February 26, while the first and second instances occurred on February 3 and 15.
Also on February 3, the DICT reported that it had blocked cyberattacks from within China against Google Workspaces and email addresses of the PCG’s National Coast Watch, the DICT itself, the Overseas Workers Welfare Administration and the official website of President Ferdinand Marcos Jr.