'Gov't faces wave of cyber attacks after Rody arrest'

Vloggers say sorry at House fake news probe

- JANVIC MATEO

Cybersecurity activities targeting government websites have increased following the arrest of former president Rodrigo Duterte, an official of the Department of Information and Communications Technology (DICT) confirmed yesterday.

In an interview with "Storycon" on One News, DICT Undersecretary Jeffrey Ian Dy said the attacks related to Duterte's arrest can be traced mostly to local hackers, many of whom are attempting to deface government websites.

Aside from these local attempts, which he said are mostly aimed at embarrassing the government, the DICT official said they also monitored an increase in the activity of so-called advanced persistent threat or APT actors. These include those whose "modus operandi" is associated with Chinese actors.

He said it is possible that they are riding on recent issues to achieve their objective, which is to "gain access to critical databases of government."

"Their target is specific," said Dy, citing the digital assets of the Philippine Coast Guard, Office of the President, DICT, National Bureau of Investigation and other law enforcement agencies.

"I feel that they are riding (on recent issues). If the attacks are voluminous, their activities will be hidden," he added in Filipino.

"There is an increase in cybersecurity activities targeting government digital assets since the arrest of the former president," he said.

"Most of these attacks don't really go through, but some did.

There was a defacement in DA (Department of Agriculture) and some DILG (Department of the Interior and Local Government) websites," he added.

Since last week alone, Dy said they have monitored around 70,000 to 80,000 "malicious attempts."

"This is quite high. We're still trying to look into patterns," he added.

Vloggers apologize