PSA: System affected by data leak contains 'financial characteristics' information

The Philippine Statistics Authority (PSA) on Thursday said "financial characteristics" of respondents are among the information stored in the system affected by a data leak. 

PSA data protection officer Atty. Eliezer Ambatali said the Community-Based Monitoring System (CBMS) contains demographic information that are “confidential”.

"There are demographic information in the CBMS. There are educational information. We have also collected financial characteristics, not necessarily connected to an amount, and some others,” he said in an interview on ANC.

Ambatali, however, added that the information leaked were "non-income related."

“Yes. For the CBMS, it is not as extensive the financial information. That's not as extensive as the other services of the PSA... We collect non-income related characteristics relating to financial status of our respondents,” explained Ambatali.

The CBMS is a data gathering system at the local level which serves as a basis in targeting households in the planning, budgeting, and implementation of government programs.

These programs cover poverty alleviation and economic development programs such as the Pantawid Pamilyang Pilipino Program.

According to Ambatali, the PSA learned about the data leak through a Facebook post of a user that allegedly has the concerned files.

He said the post contained some links to a drive that contains CBMS files and other links that may contain malware.

The data leak on PSA came following the ransomware attack on the Philippine Health Insurance Corp. (PhilHealth).

Ambatali said they cannot yet determine if the perpetrators of cyber attacks in PhilHealth and PSA are the same. But, he said they already have some leads based on the Facebook post.

He said the PSA believes that the malicious file infected into the PSA system is not similar to the Medusa malware that affected PhilHealth’s system.

Asked about the possible motive of the perpetrators behind the cyber attack on PhilHealth, Ambatali said, “From the post that we have seen, it is just to expose or brag about that they can do this kind of cyber attacks.”

Despite the data leak, Ambatali said the operation of PSA will continue including the releasing of birth, marriage, and death certificates, as well as national IDs. —Joviland Rita/ VAL, GMA Integrated News