COMELEC (Philippines Voters) data breach: 228K accounts exposed
Severity: medium · Patch status: no-fix-needed · Since 2016-04-14
In March 2016, the Philippines Commission of Elections website (COMELEC) was attacked and defaced, allegedly by Anonymous Philippines. Shortly after, data on 55 million Filipino voters was leaked publicly and included sensitive information such as genders, marital statuses, height and weight and biometric fingerprint data. The breach only included 228k email addresses. Exposed data: biometric data, dates of birth, email addresses, family members' names, genders, job titles, marital statuses, names, passport numbers, phone numbers, physical addresses, physical attributes. The breach dates from Mar 27, 2016; Have I Been Pwned loaded it on Apr 14, 2016.
What to do
- If you had a COMELEC (Philippines Voters) account, change its password and the password of any other account that reused it.
- Turn on multi-factor authentication wherever it is offered.
- Check whether your addresses are in this breach at https://haveibeenpwned.com.
- Expect targeted phishing that quotes the leaked details; verify any unexpected contact out of band.
Sources
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