Garcia: Hackers fail to breach Comelec website, OVCS

Commission on Elections Chairman George Erwin Garcia—NIÑO JESUS ORBETA

MANILA, Philippines — The Commission on Elections (Comelec) website has been the subject of a failed hacking attempt, its chairman, George Erwin Garcia, said on Wednesday.

“I would like to announce that our website has been receiving millions of hacking attempts,” Garcia said in an ambush interview at Palacio del Gobernador.

“So far, none has been successful. Kudos to our personnel who monitor the situation for 24 hours,” he added.

READ: Comelec’s system for midterm polls unlikely to get hacked, says US firm

Garcia also said that almost 60,000 attempts have been made against the Comelec’s online voting and counting system or OVCS.

He said the IP address of hackers initially appeared to be somewhere from a Middle Eastern country and a South African nation, but experts believe that these hackers are from the Philippines.

The Comelec’s precinct finder will be up two weeks before the May 12 polls, and this feature may also be the target of hackers.

READ: Garcia: Comelec’s precinct finder up 2 weeks before May 2025 polls

In the 2022 polls, Garcia recalled that the precinct finder received “35 million attempts” of hacking, but none had been successful.