Cyberattacks surge after Duterte’s arrest—DICT

Pro-Duterte vloggers linked to the House fake news probe apologized to lawmakers, but cyberattacks targeting government websites have surged following the arrest of former president Rodrigo Duterte, a Department of Information and Communications Technology (DICT) official confirmed.  

In a recent interview, DICT Undersecretary Jeffrey Ian Dy disclosed that most cyberattacks related to Duterte’s arrest came from local hackers attempting to deface government websites.  

Beyond these defacement attempts, Dy revealed that the agency’s IT experts observed a significant increase in the activities of advanced persistent threats (APT). “APT activities include those whose ‘modus operandi’ is associated with Chinese actors. It is possible that they are riding on recent issues to achieve their objective, which is to gain access to critical databases of government,” he said.  

“Their target is specific,” Dy added, identifying the Philippine Coast Guard (PCG), Office of the President (OP), DICT, National Bureau of Investigation (NBI), and other law enforcement agencies as primary victims. “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.”  

Dy noted that from last week alone, the DICT monitored around 70,000 to 80,000 “malicious attempts.” “This is quite high. We’re still trying to look into patterns,” he said.  TRACY CABRERA