Just before midnight on Sunday, Oct. 14, an individual with the handle DiabloX entered an ongoing X.com (Twitter) Space that was discussing the recent hackings on Philippine government agencies and spoke to listeners. According to him, it was alright that his words be recorded as it was his last “play” at cyber.
On October 8, Sunday, an actor on Facebook posted download links to data files belonging to the Philippine Statistics Authority (PSA), and potentially the Department of Science and Technology's (DOST) OneExpert system, and the Philippine National Police (PNP) Forensic group.
While it is commendable that PhilHealth is now being transparent about the cyberattack, it is concerning that their DPO and action center utilized email addresses with @gmail.com domains for their official functions.
According to the countdown timer on the Medusa blog on the dark Web, the files they supposedly exfiltrated from PhilHealth's systems will be released on October 3 Philippine time if the $300,000-ransom is not paid in cryptocurrency.
While the project aims to protect citizens by identifying the owners of SIM cards spreading scams, it does the opposite to Filipino mobile subscribers: exposing them to further risks such as number scraping attacks.
Despite claims of having full control over its official Twitter account, the Department of Health (DOH) still has a tweet up promoting the cryptocurrency Ethereum.
Earlier this week, subscribers of PLDT and Smart found out that their ISP was blocking chng.it, the URL shortener of the petition site Change.org, without warning.
