DepEd verifying reports of data breach

MANILA, Philippines — The Department of Education on Wednesday said it is verifying an alleged data breach in one of its offices after a social media user tracking government leaks posted about the alleged hacking incident.

In a message to reporters, DepEd Undersecretary and Spokesperson Michael Poa said that they have directed field offices to “run diagnostics” and “verify if there was indeed a hack.”

“No report as of the moment as verification is ongoing. We will provide information as soon as we get them from our Regional and Division Information Officers,” Poa said.

Poa added that DepEd is now coordinating with the Department of Information and Communications Technology (DICT) on the reported hacking incident.

X (formerly Twitter) user "Deep Web Konek" (@deepwebkonek) posted on Wednesday morning that a certain "threat actor" had allegedly hacked DepEd's database and acquired over 750 gigabytes (GB) of data. 

The information allegedly leaked, according to the user, contained "banking info, students and teachers' information." 

The DICT earlier confirmed that unidentified hackers had tried to breach government servers used by overseas Filipino workers and the Google Workspace that hosts the Philippine government’s email and storage for non-confidential information.

Specifically, DICT Undersecretary Jeffrey Ian Dy said that authorities detected persistent malware infections which caused the compromise of Google Workspace administrator accounts connected to different agencies.