Tech a byte

If you tend to visit the PRC website (www.prc.gov.ph), noticed that you can never get through on the examination results page? Does it mean that it is down? No. The site is hacked again. WTF! Damn, this is the 3rd time (1, 2, 3) that the site was hacked within this year. Looking at the status bar of the screenshot, you will notice a website hosting a script containing malicious codes. This script was injected not only on the exam results page but also on some Quick Access links. See below Google Safebrowsing diagnostic page report.

(Screenshot courtesy of DEFCONPH)

Commission on Elections (COMELEC) will have to tap about 80,000 IT Professionals on the forthcoming 2010 Automated Elections. See below for full story.

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MANILA, Philippines — With the obstacles to poll automation for the 2010 elections almost all cleared, the Commission on Elections (Comelec) is now looking for information technology (IT) people to handle the voting machines.

Comelec Commissioner Rene Sarmiento on Thursday said at least 80,000 IT personnel are needed to assist board of elections inspectors (BEIs) in the forthcoming polls.

Anticipating the possibility that not enough public school teachers would be able to fill the required staff, the Comelec plans to tap IT personnel from various government agencies.

Should that still not be enough, the Comelec might tap the private sector, Sarmiento said.

He explained that the Comelec is allowed to tap IT-capable persons to be present in each precinct during Election Day.

Only those accredited by the Department of Science and Technology (DOST) would be tapped, he added.

Sarmiento said the mechanics of tapping IT people will be up for discussion at the Comelec very soon.

With the signing of a contract designating Smartmatic and Total Information Management (TIM) as the automation partner of the Comelec for the May 2010 elections, the poll body said it will go ahead with the clustering of the 250,000 precincts used in the 2007 polls to reduce these down to only 80,000 precincts.

Under the P7.2 million contract, Smartmatic and TIM will supply the 82,500 voting machines for the 2010 elections, with 2,500 machines serving as backup. One precinct count optical scan (PCOS) machine is to cover about 1,000 voters.

Aside from the reduced number of precincts, the number of personnel manning the precincts will also be significantly reduced.

In the 2007 elections, the Comelec had to tap private school teachers to serve as members of the BEIs due to lack of public school teachers.

Records of the Department of Education (DepEd) showed that it had only 500,000 teachers during that most recent election, short of the 750,000 teachers required to serve as election inspectors.

While Smartmatic Corp and TIM have promised to send their own computer technicians to manage the voting machines, the Comelec said such technicians won’t be allowed inside polling precincts.

Sarmiento said the law is specifically states that only BEI members and the IT-capable person are allowed inside polling precincts.

Source: GMANews.TV

Don't visit the site as it is currently infected with malware.




Update --
(7/18/2009): It is now safe to visit the site.
(8/8/2009): Oishi.com.ph is listed again in Google as a 'suspicious' site.
(8/22/2009): Warning sign has been removed on SERP.

Search engine giant Google will sooner launched its newest project - the Google Chrome OS. It is an open source and lightweight OS whose primary key aspects are focused on speed, simplicity and security. Source code will be open-sourced later this year that is initially targeted to netbooks. Any questions? Visit FAQ.

LONDON - The wife of the new head of Britain's spy agency has posted pictures of her husband, family and friends on Internet networking site Facebook, details which could compromise security, a newspaper said on Sunday.

Sir John Sawers is due to take over as head of the Secret Intelligence Service in November. The SIS, popularly known as MI6, is Britain's global intelligence-gathering organization.

In what the Mail on Sunday called an "extraordinary lapse," the new spy chief's wife, Lady Shelley Sawers, posted family pictures and exposed details of where the couple live and take their holidays and who their friends and relatives are.

The details could be viewed by any of the many millions of Facebook users around the world, but were swiftly removed once authorities were alerted by the newspaper's enquiries.

"There were fears that the hugely embarrassing blunder could have compromised the safety of Sir John's family and friends," the newspaper said.

Publishing the story on its front page and the pictures on a double-page spread, the Mail on Sunday said the information "could potentially be useful to hostile foreign powers or terrorists."

It was the latest in a string of security blunders, lapses and leaks by British officials that have embarrassed the government of embattled Prime Minister Gordon Brown.

Source: ABS-CBN News Online

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A big slap on spy chief's face. Lesson is, Information Security and privacy should have taught to family members when using social networking sites as well as tight secrecy of one's role to avoid security leaks or exposure.

Well, I'm not sure if deleted photos mentioned were really 'deleted' in Facebook.