Smartmatic's system compromised, says DICT-CICC

MANILA, Philippines – The Cybercrime Investigation and Coordinating Center (CICC), a DICT-affiliated agency, believes Smartmatic’s system is compromised.

“Comelec as far as the statement of our Acting Secretary Emmanuel Caintic said that there was no hacking on the Comelec servcers because they are offline. We agree to that at this time, and we also have found out hat there was indeed a breach of the system as we have gathered from our sources,” CICC Executive Director Cezar Mancao II testified before the Join Congressional Oversight Committee on the Automated Election System on Friday.

“On the contractor of the Comelec, the Smartmatic, we believe their system is compromised and that we are not also accusing them of doing it themselves at this moment,” he added.

Smartmatic bagged a P402.7 million contract to provide the software for the May 2022 Philippine elections.

Alleged data breach on Comelec servers

Previously, the Manila Bulletin published an article about an alleged data breach on the servers of the Commission on Elections (COMELEC) that “could possibly affect the May 2022 elections.”

The COMELEC denied the allegation, claiming that the results of their investigation showed otherwise.

The National Privacy Commission stated in an official statement that the COMELEC should address the allegations made in the published Manila Bulletin article. The Election commission should decide if individual information were without a doubt compromised.

The COMELEC suffered a massive data leak on March 27, 2016 leaving millions of personal data of registered voters at risk.