NBI to assist Comelec probe into alleged hacking

The National Bureau of Investigation (NBI) is ready to assist the Commission on Elections (Comelec) in its probe into an alleged hacking incident, according to Justice Secretary Menardo Guevarra.

Guevarra stated that the DOJ will allow the Comelec to complete its internal investigation first.

However, he assured that the NBI would gladly provide assistance if a broader investigation is deemed necessary and their help would be beneficial.

The Comelec began validating a newspaper report on Monday claiming that hackers downloaded 60 gigabytes of data from its systems, which could potentially compromise the integrity of Eleksyon 2022.

Comelec spokesperson James Jimenez confirmed that the hackers accessed data that had not yet been encoded into the systems, including usernames and personal identification numbers for vote-counting machines.

The authors of the newspaper report have also been invited to provide more information regarding the incident.