PDEA-6 deactivates email  account after ‘hacking try’

By Jennifer P. Rendon 

A possible hacking attempt compelled the Philippine Drug Enforcement Agency 6 (PDEA-6) to change its email address.

In a statement dated March 4, 2020. Alex Tablate, PDEA-6 chief, said the agency is officially decommissioning its authorized email account pdea6@yahoo.com (Email name: ICCAT) effective immediately.

It has already changed email address.

The statement added, “further, the office requests other offices and/or contacts of PDEA to disregard/refrain from opening an email sent yesterday March 3, 2020 at around 6:00 p.m. with the subject, “Confidential information” sent by ICCAT: pdea6@yahoo.com, and not to provide any identity confirmation or password requests.”

It also requested that any “suspicious information, requests and confirmation from the said email address be disregarded or reported to our office immediately.”

Tablate said they noted that something was amiss in the email activity on Tuesday (March 3) evening.

The said email address had been used even by previous PDEA-6 regional directors.

However, as a matter of protocol, the password is being changed frequently.

Only two persons – Tablate and his staff – knew of the recent password.

But Tablate said they could not confirm if it was really a hacking attempt.

“We just noticed something irregular in the spam folder of our email,” he said.

Tablate clarified that internal operations or confidential and sensitive information are not contained on the said email address.

“But we feared that some messages from other sources might be flagged,” he said.

As such, changing email address seemed to be a logical action, Tablate added.