A friend of mine in the Philippines, a security researcher himself, said to me that "the breach itself isn't really serious -- it's the candidate the breach favors thats the bigger controversy"
There is a fear of mass cheating in the presidential election. 1) survey results published in national TV have a wide margin difference with the results in poll using social media(fb, tweeter) 2) At first comelec don't want to print vote count recipient of voting machine with the alibi that it will make the polling period goes longer. 3) No 3rd party source code review.
I find this data breach staggering. With your friend's comment, clearly there is a cultural vector I am completely missing.
Also, please expand on their comment re: the event helping a particular candidate. I don't understand how this incident favors / helps a particular candidate over another.
I'm am sorry but what kind of security researcher can claim that this breach isn't serious? The electoral implications may be a bigger controversy but to suggest that the breach isn't serious it's insane. What is described in the post is nothing short of a nightmare scenario for anyone, no only security-conscious people.
Unfortunately, the government undervalues security and the work of its IT and CS departments. Lots of legacy code/databases and workers are underpaid(compared to the private sector).
