Online recruitment ops traced to China a ‘nat’l security concern’ — AFP

MANILA, Philippines — The online recruitment effort of “part-time military consultants” that was traced to China is now considered a national security concern by the Armed Forces of the Philippines.

AFP spokesperson Col. Francel Margareth Padilla made this remark as she noted that the scheme could have been made to obtain internal military data.

“We are considering this as a national security concern,” Padilla said in a public briefing.

“Any attack in the cyber domain can be, of course, monetary or data-driven so [perhaps] what they want is to get internal data from the armed forces,” Padilla also said when asked about the potential motives of the scheme.

Furthermore, Defense spokesperson Arsenio Andoloing said the AFP was ordered to investigate what he deemed to be a modus operandi.

READ: DND tells AFP to probe recruitment ad traced to China

Last Saturday (April 6), Manila Bulletin’s Art Samaniego revealed a “strange online recruitment effort” to a military website that claims to be affiliated with a US military advertising agency.

According to Samaniego, the US-based agency with a website called militarymedia(dot)com denied affiliation with the militarymedia(dot)group, which posted its advisories on its Facebook page.

Samaniego learned that the website’s credentials, which have since become inaccessible, were found to have a Chinese origin.

READ: PH Army observes a rise in number of persons applying to become soldiers

Several active military personnel were learned to have expressed intent to apply for the position through Facebook, but Padilla said they don’t have an exact number of the personnel.

“I don’t have the exact numbers, but we cannot determine the exact number because we are basing only from screenshots of posts and comments that were made. But, of course, we have to check into the private messages [sent to the Facebook page],” Padilla explained.

Padilla also reminded the troops “to be always wary of these things.”