Several reports of Filipino Facebook users being locked out of their accounts have come to light over the past weeks. This has caused some users to be alarmed with the assumption that this was orchestrated by a secret group of hackers.
A 29-year old BPO content writer, Leonard Postrado relayed that, earlier this week, he had been chatting with his friends when all of a sudden he was kicked out of Facebook.
[ads1]
A 36-year old government employee, Kim Quilinguing, had a similar story wherein he was writing a status update when he got logged out of his account because of “suspicious activity.”
An unknown group is yet to claim responsibility over the alleged hackings but a number of netizens believe that this may be the work of the so-called Duterte Cyber Warriors (DCW) group.
Patricia Bonife, Facebook user, narrated that the DCW put up a post on Facebook calling people for surveillance over those individuals who are purportedly influencing the youth into upholding anti-Marcos rhetoric.
Afterwards, she noticed that Ateneo de Manila University students have complained about having their accounts compromised, which could be in relation with the school’s blatant protest against the Marcos burial.
“I’ve seen a lot of people tweeting about it too. We’re still not sure if this DCW device is behind it, and it’s hard to prove if ever, but the sheer number is just alarming,” according to Bonife who was also a graduate of Ateneo.
A senior Interdisciplinary Student at Ateneo, Bianca Rodriguez also disclosed that Facebook had notified her of a suspicious log-in attempts on her account a few days ago.
[ads2]
Jan Daniel-Belmonte, a user whose account also got compromised, found at least 152 other victims, mostly coming from the University of the Philippines and Ateneo.
Trying to collect info. So far there’s a huge chunk of victims w/ similarities but need to confirm. Help us: https://t.co/LrgJipopI1
— Jan-Daniel Belmonte (@janbelmonte) November 24, 2016
Numerous protests against the burial of Marcos at the Libingan ng mga Bayani were mostly held by the youth, some of which placed the blame on President Rodrigo Duterte.
Supporters found this act uncalled for which led the DCW to develop a “DCW mobile offensive tool” which is able to monitor wifi and cellphone traffic within 20 to 35 feet and is handy.
A post written by “Dr. Salim McDoom” on November 19 in Facebook which stated, “Nagsisimula na po ang Oplang Cyber Tokhang gamit ito. Pero kelangan pa po namin ng madami pang field operatives lalo na sa Makati area.”
A digital and social media lecturer at UP, Juned Sonido did affirm, however, that it was possible for a device to extract data from people which is similar to the DCW device. He said that the device can actually extra passwords from devices.
Manila Bulletin’s Tech Editor Art Samaniego said it was easy for anyone to lay claim for these attacks.
A later post from Samaniego stated, “The FB lock-out hack by Duterte Cyber Warriors (DCW) was a social experiment. It aims to prove that established media organizations could be easily manipulated to disseminate false news.”
Sources: (news.abs-cbn.com, facebook.com)
[ads3]
