Two more government agencies have allegedly been the subject of data breaches, a tech expert said Thursday, following news of similar cyber attacks against the Philippine Statistics Authority and the Philippine Health Insurance Corp.

Data Ethics PH founder Dominic Vincent Ligot said ransomware attacks on government agencies were being done by cybercriminals out to make a profit. Successful ransomware attempts are then posted in Dark Web blogs as "trophies."

"I-a-attack nila 'yung system mo tapos maniningil sila...Ito nasingil namin, ito hinde," he said in a TeleRadyo Serbisyo interview.

The second type of hacker, on the other hand, only wants to show the weaknesses in an agency's cybersecurity system, Ligot said.

He said the PSA data breach could have been done by the second type of hacker since no ransom demand has been issued.

Ligot said that aside from PSA, 2 more government agencies have allegedly been victimized by cybercriminals.

"May dalawa pang ahensya na hindi pa naisisiwalat. Pabayaan na natin ang mga ahensya themselves to announce it. They are relatively major," he said.

Ligot said some of the data allegedly leaked on the Dark Web include confidential documents from the National Intelligence Coordinating Agency and emails from Philippine government offices.

He also cited other instances of high-profile hackings including the theft of 77 million records in the Commission on Elections website in 2016.

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Websites of local government units are also frequent targets of cybercriminals, he said.

Ligot also cited reports that the PhilHealth hack was conducted because its anti-virus and security software had already expired. "Ang sabi hindi raw lumusot sa procurement 'yung approval. Iniisip ko, parang napaka-tragic naman kung 'yun ang rason. Hindi lang na-approve 'yung procurement ng anti-virus mo, ngayon naikalat na 'yung data ng taumbayan."

He chided PhilHealth President and Chief Executive Officer Emmanuel Ledesma Jr. for seemingly making light of the Medusa ransomware hack.

"Sorry na lang to PhilHealth pero on the day of the release, mismong presidente nila nagsabi: 'Tignan na lang natin kung ano ang lalabas.' Kumbaga, tila hinahamon pa nila si Medusa, feeling nila bina-bluff lang ni Medusa 'yung release. Wag po tayong ganun. Let's treat these things seriously."

He said among the data records possibly leaked are emails, birthdays, passwords and phone numbers.

The National Privacy Commission has launched a deeper investigation into the data breach that hit PhilHealth after initial analysis found that it involved a staggering 734GB of data.

It said that the investigation will look into the accountability of PhilHealth officials for the breach, which may have partly been caused by expired antivirus software.

The NPC said that its Complaints and Investigation Division found “sensitive personal information” among the data that was affected by the breach.

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