PCG recovers hacked Facebook account. Now what?
The Philippine Coast Guard (PCG) finally recovered its official Facebook account on Tuesday morning, April 2, four days after it was hacked. However, concerns as to how the agency will prevent a “three-peat” of the incident are still aplenty.
PCG spokesperson Rear Adm. Armando Balilo said the Facebook account was officially retrieved around 9 a.m. by personnel from the Coast Guard Public Affairs Service (CGPAS). The account has 989,000 followers.
More or less 10 malicious videos consisted of foreign movie clips were posted on the PCG Facebook account during the four-day hacking period which began on Good Friday, March 29, although all of them were already erased as of this writing.
Balilo said the CGPAS coordinated with the Cybercrime Investigation and Coordinating Center (CICC) under the Department of Information and Communications Technology (DICT) and Facebook’s Meta to conduct backend operations and assess the security breach.
The identity of the hacker, however, is still being “assessed” by the PCG.
Some social media users expressed dismay that the PCG's Facebook account appears to be very vulnerable from cyberattacks.
One Facebook user said: Paano nila poprotektahan ang coast natin kung sarili nilang tools hindi nila maprotektahan? (How can they protect our coast if they cannot protect their own tools?)"
To prevent the hacking from happening again, the PCG said that a hardware check will be conducted by the CGPAS with IT experts from the Coast Guard Weapons, Communications, Electronics, and Information System Command (CGWEISC) “to strengthen the agency’s cybersecurity measures.”
A specialized training for the IT experts of the PCG is also ongoing to equip them with knowledge on how to address and prevent cyberattacks.
“Aside from the hardware check, the DICT is also conducting a Cybersecurity Attack and Dark Web Monitoring Training on concerned PCG units,” PCG information officer Dianne Gumatay told the Manila Bulletin.
The PCG said it understands the concerns of social media users that the agency needs to step up its cybersecurity capabilities to thwart similar cyberattacks in the future as many of them could not get updates from the PCG’s Facebook account about port operations especially since it happened during the Holy Week, when a lot of people are traveling to the province for a vacation.
“We understand this. After the hardware check, we will install additional barriers on the laptops and desktops that we are using in the office. We also procured additional units to augment the resources needed. We’re just waiting for their arrival,” Gumatay bared.
The incident marked the second time that the Facebook account of the PCG was hacked by unknown entities. The first hacking occurred on February 26, and the account was recovered three days later.
All in all, the PCG's social media accounts and website were compromised by hackers at least four times in the past three months.
The website of the PCG’s National Coast Watch System (NCWS) was targeted by hackers sometime in January although the attempt failed when experts from the DICT intervened; but the X account (formerly Twitter) of the PCG was hacked on February 15 and recovered days later.