Several Philippine government websites, including a key Malacañang agency, have been subjected to various forms of cyber attacks, following the United Nations International Arbitration court's ruling in favor of the Philippines on the West Philippine Sea territorial dispute.
At least 68 national and local government websites have been subjected to attacks, which included attempts of hacking and defacement, slowdowns and distributed denial of service (DDOS) attacks.
Among the top targets of the cyber infiltration were the Department of National Defense and Malacañang's Presidential Management Staff.
These attacks started in the afternoon of July 12, the day the Permanent Court of Arbitration released its decision, and surged again on Wednesday, July 13.
It was not clear, however, if the attacks were carried out by parties associated with China, as they apparently originated from multiple countries. The government is yet to pinpoint the sources of the attacks.
DDOS has been identified as the main form of attack. In a DDOS attack, the target website is flooded with incoming traffic from different sources, which could be ranging in thousands. The sudden surge of incoming traffic would overwhelm the capacity of the target agency's web server to process the request, even with an attempt to block them.
The surge in traffic also makes it difficult for the target website to identify legitimate requests from malicious attacks.
Among the cyber-attacked government websites were:
- The Department of National Defense
- Bangko Sentral ng Pilipinas
- The Presidential Management Staff
- The Department of Foreign Affairs
- The Department of Interior and Local Government
- Metro Manila Development Authority
- National Disaster Risk Reduction and Management Council
Newly created Department of Information and Communications Technology was also hit.
Non-sensitive agencies, such as Komisyon sa Wikang Pilipino, the National Archives of the Philippines and East Avenue Medical Center was also attacked.
The Palace continues to monitor the cyber attacks to see if the hackers would try to access important information.
Photo: PhilStar
Source: InterAksyon
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