President Benigno Aquino III. FILE PHOTO
MANILA, Philippines—A Filipino hacker has posted online what he claimed to be President Benigno Aquino’s personal mobile telephone numbers, with Palace spokesman Saturday denouncing the act as “cyber vandalism”.
President spokesman Ricky Carandang would not confirm if the numbers were really the president’s, or if their release on the worldwide web had compromised the leader’s personal security or state secrets.
“It’s cyber vandalism plain and simple,” Carandang told Agence Fraqnce-Presse.
“We’re dealing with it. That’s all I can say for now.”
The three “Personal Mobile Number(s)” were posted late Friday on the Facebook site of a user named “#pR.is0n3r”.
The site owner urged his followers, who numbered more than 9,400 as of Saturday, to communicate directly with their President.
Two of the three phone numbers were apparently no longer working on Saturday afternoon when dialled by INQUIRER.net.
“The majority are not getting answers to so many issues. It is difficult to speak to a person through go-betweens. If we send him a letter we’re not even sure he will receive it,” the user wrote in Filipino.
The author said he belonged to the hacker group “Anonymous Philippines”, which has vandalized a number of government websites in the past.
The Facebook post was also linked to a Twitter micro-blog site with the same user name.