Probe underway on alleged data breach at SolGen’s office
THE OFFICE of the Solicitor General (OSG) is now looking into the alleged data breach of its confidential documents, including thousands of court cases, Justice Secretary Menardo I. Guevarra told reporters on Monday.
“I will appreciate it very much if the OSG will inform the DoJ (Department of Justice) of its findings, considering the big number of DoJ cases being handled by the OSG,” Mr. Guevarra said.
The OSG is one of the agencies under the Justice department.
“The OSG handles thousands of cases in the Court of Appeals and in the Supreme Court in representation of the government in general, and of the DoJ in particular. The DoJ therefore has substantial interest in finding out the cause of this alleged data breach and any prejudice to the interest of the government that such breach, if true, may have unduly caused,” he added.
London-based cyber security firm TurgenSec said in a statement on April 30 that it came across “a publicly accessible data store which belonged to the Solicitor General of the Philippines.”
It said the store appears to contain 345,000 files and documents “ranging from documents generated in the day to day running of ‘The Solicitor General of the Philippines,’ to staff training documents, internal passwords and policies, staffing payment information, information on financial processes, and activities including audits, and several hundred files titled with presumably sensitive keywords such as ‘Private, Confidential, Witness and Password.’”
The firm said it sent e-mails to the OSG and the Philippine government about the data store on March 1 and 24, but has yet to receive a reply.
The OSG said on Monday it is still verifying the “accuracy and veracity” of TurgenSec’s report, and will “respond appropriately only after a proper verification.”— Bianca Angelica D. Añago
