THE website being used by the city of Manila for its mass vaccination program was hacked 133 times on Wednesday night, in what is an apparent attempt to sabotage the said program.

This was bared by Mayor Isko Moreno, who lamented that this was the worst among the numerous attempts to derail the city’s vaccination program, which had been very successful since it was launched in December 2020.

The mayor said that under the supervision of Vice Mayor Honey Lacuna and Manila Health Department chief Dr. Poks Pangan and his assistant chief Dr. Ed Santos, the city’s vaccinating teams have been beating their own record in terms of number of jabs given each vaccination day.

The latest record is over 45,000 jabs done in one day in the city of Manila with nearly 1.5 million doses already administered so far, which is the fastest in the metro.

Moreno, after being informed by Pangan about the hacking, made a plea for unscrupulous hackers to spare the city’s mass vaccination program from their evil schemes, as this program is intended to benefit the innocent citizens of Manila.

It was learned from electronic data processing (EDP) department chief Fortune Palileo that the hacking happens almost every day, but that the last serious attempt was made two months ago when the number of registrants and the mass vaccination both soared.

“May nangha-hack po sa site natin. Kumbaga po isang type nun eh DOS (Denial of service). Parang fina-flood po ‘yung connection sa site para di maka-konek ang mga tao or mag-down ang system kalaunan,” Palileo, who established the system being used by the city, explained.

Palileo added that the site being hacked is the one being used in the vaccination and it is also where the residents register and where clients log in, and that the hacking causes error in the site. It will take a day to fix the problem.

He assured Moreno that necessary adjustments are being made and that all records are still retrievable since backups are made every day.

Meanwhile, on Thursday, Moreno received a show cause order from the Department of the Interior and Local Government giving him 10 days to explain why he should not be held administratively liable for his alleged failure to comply with the policy and program mandated to his office based on assessment and verification in the 2018 Anti-Drug Abuse Council Performance Audit.

However, the sitting mayor in 2018 was Joseph “Erap” Estrada as Moreno assumed office only on June 30, 2019, after defeating Estrada via a landslide victory.

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Itchie G. Cabayan