Facebook foul play: Cyber-criminal floods Thai government pages with explicit content

An unidentified cyber-criminal hacked several official Facebook pages belonging to Thai government agencies and flooded them with explicit videos and pictures. The Minister of Digital Economy and Society (DES) Ministry, Chaiwut Thanakamanusorn, admitted that he could not solve the issue in time and urged the new government to take action.

One of the affected pages, the Bangkok Provincial Education Office, created a new Facebook page after the old one was hacked and flooded with pornography and TikTok clips of sexy women dancing. On the new Facebook page, the department reported…

“Dear followers, the former Facebook page of the Bangkok Provincial Education Office was hacked by an unidentified person with malicious intentions. The department is now working to solve the issue. Please note that all messages and other content posted on the former page were unauthorized and not endorsed by our department.”

The Facebook page with the issue has been closed. However, the Bangkok Provincial Education Office was not the sole target of this cybercrime wave. Various other government agencies’ official Facebook pages were also hacked. For example, the Bangkok Planetarium, Baan Phaeo District Office, and the Army Radio.

Yesterday, the DES Minister, Chaiwut, reported to several Thai media agencies that his department had been aware of the issue for some time. They had already shared guidelines on safeguarding Facebook pages with each department affected.

Chaiwut explained that each department took care of its own Facebook page, so the security measures were different. He said the pages could be hacked no matter how strong the security measures were because the hackers developed their skills from time to time.

After being asked about the solution, Chiwut said…

“We cannot solve the issue at this time. We have to wait for the new government to set up a system centre and gather the official websites and Facebook pages together. The problem can be solved by buying a cyber security system. However, our government team could not do this within the given timeframe.”

In March, a hacker under the pseudonym, 9Near, threatened the Thai government to release the personal data of 55 million Thai citizens to the public. The hacker urged the government to contact them to stop the action. The hacker also posted an example of the data including Thai people’s names, addresses and phone numbers on the website to prove his threat.

According to a recent update on the Naewna news agency site, the hacker was a soldier from the Royal Thai Army in Nonthaburi province near Bangkok. The soldier confessed that he just did it for fun. The official charges issued against him will be later released by the DES.