MANILA, Philippines — The “data breach” suffered by election system provider Smartmatic was actually part of a scam hatched by hackers to con unscrupulous politicians into believing they could manipulate the elections. Mancao said they peddled their scam by presenting old voters’ data that Smartmatic used to prepare for the elections and was stored in a laptop computer that was supposedly stolen by former Smartmatic employee Ricardo Argana. Argana, who initially surrendered to the National Bureau of Investigation but was eventually released, was allegedly paid P300,000 by Limpiado, the scam’s alleged mastermind, for the Smartmatic data. The data appeared current because they included voters’ personal details, their precincts and voting history, but actually had nothing to do with the May 9 elections, Mancao said. RELATED STORY:Arrested hackers obtained voters’ data, says cybercrime center chiefSubscribe to our daily newsletter By providing an email address.

Source: Philippine Daily Inquirer April 29, 2022 11:04 UTC