Anonymous and LulzSec hackers want fair elections, don't want officials to tamper with the vote counting rig

Apr 7, 2016 16:30 GMT  ·  By

Anonymous Philippines, the local branch of the famous hacker collective, broke into the website of the Philippines Commission on Elections (COMELEC) and left a message warning about possible fraud during next month's presidential ballot.

The incident took place on March 27, and the defacement message was removed two days later. The hackers also posted a video on social media, warning officials not to tamper with the public's vote.

Anonymous Philippines members feared that some corrupt government officials may try to abuse PSOC (Precinct Count Optical Scan) devices to manipulate votes in favor of one candidate or another. Hackers claim they only want fair elections.

"Comelec, it is your mandate to protect the integrity of our votes. The people want an honest election. We demand legitimate election results. We hope for encouraging changes in the electoral system," the hackers said in their video (embedded below).

Hackers warned about an impending data breach

On the same day, n3far1ous, one of the group's members, hinted that the group could do more damage if their warning was not heeded. "Dear COMELEC, do you think it is impossible to dump the whole database? Well, think again.." the hacker wrote in a Facebook post.

Their forewarning became a reality on April 6, when security firm Trend Micro discovered that another hacking crew, LulzSec Philippines, also hacked the same COMELEC website, stole the content of 16 databases, and posted it online.

In total, the databases held information on over 55 million voters, which contained names, addresses, birth dates, ID cards, passports, data on candidates, parties, oversea voters (1.3 million records), and even voter fingerprints (15.8 million).

This is the second massive data leak of voter information after security researcher Chris Vickery discovered a MongoDB database that was exposing 191 million records on US voters. Additionally, a few days ago, an unknown hacker also leaked the details of nearly 50 million Turkish citizens.

Presidential elections in the Philippines are scheduled for May 9. Following this incident, the world's eye will probably be on the small country, exactly what the hacktivists wanted.