There were more than 20,000 attempts to hack the automated election system, it has been revealed by a top Philippine official.
However, the government was able to block all of these attempts, said the country’s National Security Adviser Hermogenes Esperon, Jr. on Wednesday.
“Nobody was successful in hacking the system,” said Esperon, who is also co-chairman of the National Cybersecurity Inter-Agency Committee. “There were more than 20,000 attempts…pero hindi nila nakayanan [but they were unsuccessful].”
Esperon also highlighted the speedy transmission of election results and called the automated system “efficient,” despite the numerous reports of hours-long voting delays on Monday due to faulty vote-counting machines (VCMs).
Many supporters of presidential candidate Vice President Leni Robredo are protesting against the “fraudulent election”, citing the malfunctioning VCMs and the quick transmission of data to servers.
A video is also being circulated on social media showing shaded ballots being torn by what appears to be uniformed personnel. The Commission on Elections is investigating the matter.
