Philippine Hacker Publishes President’s ‘Personal Mobile Numbers’

MANILA – A Philippine hacker has posted online what he claimed to be the president’s personal mobile telephone numbers, with Benigno Aquino’s spokesman Saturday denouncing the act as “cyber vandalism”.

Aquino 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 AFP.

“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 9,000 as of Saturday, to communicate directly with their president.

All three phone numbers were apparently no longer working on Saturday morning when dialled by AFP.

“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 vandalised 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.