PCSO FB page not hacked—DICT  

MANILA, Philippines — The inappropriate photos posted on the Facebook account of Philippine Charity Sweepstakes Office (PCSO) could be due to “carelessness” and not hacking.

This is the statement of Department of Information and Communications Technology (DICT) Assistant Secretary Renato Paraiso on Wednesday.

Paraiso said the incident was more of an “internal thing,” and no other parties were involved, based on DICT’s initial assessment.

“We cannot even consider this as hacking, kasi po from initial assessment, kasi nakipag-usap na rin ang PCSO sa Meta. This is more of an internal thing with PCSO,” Paraiso said over a Radyo 360 interview.

(We cannot even consider this as hacking because, from initial assessment, PCSO has also talked with Meta. This is more of an internal thing with PCSO.)

“Mayroon pong mga inappropriate actions that were conducted by the nangangalaga ng Facebook page nila,” he revealed.

(There were inappropriate actions that were conducted by the caretaker of their Facebook page.)

“Ang tingin po namin [dito], kapabayaan… Burara lang talaga ‘yung nangangalaga nung webpage,” he disclosed.

(We think [this] is carelessness… The person taking care of the webpage is really just neglectful.)

Paraiso said the public should not be worried because there were no compromised data on the PCSO system.

The social media pages and websites of government agencies are also not integrated with each other, he said.

Moreover, Paraiso said PCSO had asked DICT to conduct a vulnerability assessment and penetration testing (VAPT) on its system.

VAPT is the process of proactively hacking a system to determine its vulnerability level against cyberattacks.

In a short statement posted on its website on Monday, PCSO said it has voluntarily deactivated its Facebook page to investigate the matter.

The page is already accessible as of this posting.

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