Philippine Government Websites Attacked Amid Protests

On Sunday, September 21, a group of orchestrated cyberattacks hit various government web pages in the Philippines, as protesters in the country held nationwide rallies against corruption in government-funded flood control projects. Although the attacks led to certain disruption and defacing of certain sites, the officials assured that there was no theft of sensitive data, and the affected sites were restored within a short time.

The Department of Information and Communications Technology (DICT) and the Cybercrime Investigation and Coordinating Center (CICC) claimed that several attempts had been made to intrude and compromise into the national and local government websites. Seven government websites of the national government, including the Department of Budget and Management, the Department of Public Works and Highways, and Department of Foreign Affairs were also breached successfully, and restored within a minute.

Secretary of DICT, Henry Aguda, attributed the fast recovery to the cybersecurity preparedness on whose behalf the nation had prepared to host the ASEAN Summit. He said that although numerous efforts were made to hack into the locations, only a tiny percentage were effective, which he wrote, "Given the number of our digital materials, we did not really feel any significant concerns.

CICC Undersecretary Renato Paraiso said in a press conference that they are currently working with the Philippine National Police through the Anti-Cybercrime Group (PNP-ACG), in which they apply the facial recognition technology to identify the culprits based on the footage of the related protest at Mendiola, Manila. It was also suspected that the attacks were related to the demonstrations about the accusations that 20 percent of all PHP545-billion of budget allocated to flood control projects was spent by only 15 contractors.

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