PCG regains control of hacked Facebook page

MANILA, Philippines — The Philippine Coast Guard has regained control of its Facebook page after it was hacked five days ago, on Good Friday, the PCG announced yesterday.

In a statement, the PCG announced that its Coast Guard Public Affairs Service (CGPAS) “recovered full access” of the agency’s official Facebook page.

The hacker had posted clips of different movies on the PCG’s page.

PCG spokesman Rear Admiral Armand Balilo said that in order to reclaim the social media account, “the CGPAS coordinated with the Cybercrime Investigation and Coordinating Center under the Department of Information and Communications Technology (DICT) and Meta to conduct backend operations and assess the security breach.”

The DICT is still assessing the breach to identify the hacker.

Balilo added that the CGPAS would soon coordinate with its Coast Guard Weapons, Communications, Electronics and Information System Command for a hardware check.

This was the fourth time that the PCG’s sites were compromised. The first two times involved the PCG website and its X account.

In the third incident, which took place from Feb. 26 to 29, the PCG’s Facebook page was hacked and several movie clips were illegally posted.

The PCG also coordinated with the CICC to recover its Facebook page.

The PCG said three hackers identified only as Fatima Hasan, Murat Kansu and Vicky Bates tampered with its social media account.