Comelec says polls secured as cybersecurity center flags Smartmatic ‘breach’

MANILA, Philippines — The Commission on Elections assured lawmakers on Friday that the polls are still secured even as the government’s cybersecurity center flagged a “breach” of the systems of Smartmatic, the company that has bagged the most contracts with the poll body.

Comelec Commissioner Marlon Casquejo told members of the Joint Congressional Oversight Committee on the Automated Election System that even if it were true that Smartmatic’s systems were compromised, it would not impact the elections as the poll body only provides them with publicly available data.

“In the event there are allegedly hacking incident in our provider, we are pretty much sure the election is still intact because we do not provide them any sensitive data information,” Casquejo said during the hearing.

The Department of Information and Technology’s Cybercrime Investigation and Coordination Center said in the same hearing that it has found out that Smartmatic’s systems were compromised.

“On the contractor of the Comelec, which is Smartmatic, we believe that their system is compromised,” CICC executive director Cezar Mancao said, who told lawmakers he will elaborate further in an executive session.

Mancao, however, said that the CICC agrees “at this time” with the initial findings of DICT that a hack on the Comelec’s servers was not possible as the vote-counting machine system was offline and that the data purportedly accessed did not exist at the time of the alleged breach.

Manila Bulletin first reported that Comelec’s servers were supposedly hacked and that a group of hackers was able to download files including usernames and pins of vote-counting machines.

Comelec stands by its conclusion that their systems were not hacked, as the information alleged to be downloaded does not exist in their systems as the configuration files containing them have not been completed.

The National Privacy Commission has said that it will continue with clarificatory hearings involving the Comelec, its third-party provider and Manila Bulletin on the alleged hack.