As if we don’t already have enough horror stories plaguing the upcoming May 9 elections.
A group of hackers calling themselves LulzSec Pilipinas have launched their own search engine using data of Filipino voters stolen from the Commission on Elections (Comelec) database. They’ve even given the search engine the rather cheeky moniker, Philippines, we have your data :b. (Emoticon included.)
LulzSec Pilipinas claims to have dumped data on millions of Filipino voters. They even provided a link to the raw data dump.
In a statement posted on the search engine’s front page, the group declares, “As you know (or don’t know), recently LulzSec Pilipinas have hacked comelec.ph. They have dumped the database of about 70 million of Philippines voters and have published all the data at archive.org. The database contains a lot of sensitive information, including fingerprint data and passport information. So, we thought that it would be fun to make a search engine over that data.”
The hackers added, “Hackers just hack and download data from websites but we make it accessible for anyone. It’s one thing to hear news about a huge data leak and another to is see your data in a public website. Maybe, at least now, government will start thinking about security of citizens’ personal data.”
There are fears that the exposed data will be used for indetity theft and other crimes. A simple search would reveal a person’s complete address. Othe results may yield even the person’s fingerprints and passport data.
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