The official website of the The House of Representatives went offline again Tuesday due to “suspicious and unusual activities,” House Secretary General Reginald Velasco said, two days after hackers defaced its homepage with a mocking message.
Senator Sherwin Gatchalian said the recent cyberattacks at the Philippine Health Insurance Corp. (PhilHealth), the Philippine Statistics Authority (PSA) and the House could have been carried out by an organized group of hackers bent on testing the government’s ability to ward off such attacks.
“That’s possible. If you notice, they are testing the government. I haven’t heard of cyberattacks against the private sector in the past two to three weeks. They’re attacking the government. We still do not know if they were also attacking the small local government units,” Gatchalian said.
Velasco, in a statement Tuesday, said: “We regret to inform the public that the official website of the House of Representatives has been voluntarily taken offline once again. Despite our recent security enhancements, we have detected suspicious and unusual activities that necessitate further scrutiny.”
The House’s website was defaced and became inaccessible on Sunday.
Its homepage showed a caricature of a laughing man with this message: “YOU’VE BEEN HACKED. YOU’VE BEEN HACKED. HAVE A NICE DAY.” Underneath, it said: “HAPPY APRIL FULLZ KAHIT OCTOBER PALANG! HACKED BY 3MUSKETEERZ 15-October-2023.”
Velasco said they had to take the website offline on Tuesday as a “precautionary measure to double-check and reinforce the cybersecurity measures that were undertaken.
“Our primary concern is to guarantee the safety, integrity, and reliability of our digital platform for the citizens we serve,” he said.
Velasco earlier said the House has considered tapping a third-party firm to improve its cybersecurity following the hacking incident.
Meanwhile, Senate Secretary Renato Bantug Jr. said the Senate reported a spike in cyberattacks on its system over the weekend.
He said their team went on alert and continuously monitored their system after they learned that the House website had been hacked.
“There is a perimeter and application firewall in the Senate, but our tech team also made adjustments. Per our IT, we recorded a spike in attacks last Sunday.”
Attempts to penetrate the website were made by “bots” or software applications programmed to do certain tasks, said Mario Antonio Sulit of the Senate’s Electronic Data Processing Management Information System.
He said the IP addresses of those who tried to enter the Senate website were from Germany, US, Vietnam, and the Philippines.
“Bots can actually bring down a website,” Sulit said.
Senators raised the alarm over the series of cyberattacks on government institutions.
Senate Majority Leader Joel Villanueva reiterated his call for the government to boost its cybersecurity, noting that cyberattacks were a threat to the country’s security and the livelihood of millions of Filipinos.
Gatchalian said it was not a coincidence that hackers targeted government institutions.
Although it was just the website being hacked or defaced, he said he fears a bigger problem looms since some critical infrastructure are not ready for such attacks.
He said the Department of Information and Communication Technology (DICT) must be given an additional budget to deal with such attacks.