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Posts tagged as “Website”

DICT’s statement on the hacking and defacing of the House of Representative website

October 16, 2023

Department of Information and Communications Technology (DICT) just release an official statement regarding the defacing of the House of Representative (HoR) website.

This is the full text of DICT’s statement;

The Department of Information and Communications Technology (DICT) confirms that a cybersecurity incident involving the House of Representatives (HOR) website occurred on Sunday, 15 October 2023.

The HOR immediately put the website offline to prevent further unauthorized access and reported the incident to the DICT โ€“ Philippine National Computer Emergency Response Team (CERT-PH).

CERT-PH is conducting an investigation to determine if sensitive data has been exfiltrated by the threat actor.

Recommendations were likewise provided to the HOR IT Team to prevent future security breaches on their website.

The DICT informs the public that the HOR website shall be online soon with its security vulnerabilities already addressed.

The next stages of the investigation on the incident, which include threat actor attribution and case build-up, shall be pursued by the Cybercrime Investigation and Coordinating Center, in coordination with our law enforcement agencies.

The DICT reaffirms its commitment to be an active partner of government agencies as they fulfill the primary responsibility of safeguarding their own ICT systems and infrastructure against cyber threats.

By:

Renato A. Paraiso
Assistant Secretary for Legal Affairs
DICT Spokesperson
pio@dict.gov.ph

At the sametime, DICT also release a Tagalog version of their statement.

Yesterday, the website of the House of Representative (HoR) was hacked by the hacker group 3MUSKETEERZ, defacing it with the troll face meme captioned it โ€œYouโ€™ve been hacked. Have a nice Day! Happy April Fullz Kahit October Palang! Fix your website.โ€ and changed its content with the same messaging.

Website of House of Representative hacked by 3MUSKETEERZ

October 15, 2023

Website of House of Representative (Congress) have been hacked and defaced by 3MUSKETEERZ.

The group used troll face meme captioned it “You’ve been hacked. Have a nice Day! Happy April Fullz Kahit October Palang! Fix your website.” The group even changed its content with the same messaging.

The official X (twitter) account (@HouseofRepsPH) already release a statement and that they are currently working with Department of Information and Communications Technology (DICT), Cybercrime Investigation and Coordinating Center (CICC) and law enforcement agencies concerned to investigate the matter.

PRESS STATEMENT
Secretary General Reginald Velasco

We wish to inform the public that the official website of the House of Representatives experienced unauthorized access earlier today. Immediate steps have been taken to address the issue, and we are working closely with the Department of Information and Communications Technology (DICT), Cybercrime Investigation and Coordinating Center (CICC) and law enforcement agencies concerned to investigate the matter.

While we work to restore the website fully, we ask for patience and understanding. We are committed to ensure the security and integrity of our digital platforms, and we will implement additional measures to prevent such incidents in the future.

For the moment, we advise the public to be cautious of any suspicious emails or communications that claim to be from the House of Representatives.

We will keep the public updated as more information becomes available.

As of this posting, the website is currently offline and accessing the website http://www.congress.gov.ph/ will just give you the standard “This site canโ€™t be reached” message.

PinoyExchange.Com to shutdown on April 15th

April 4, 2023

PinoyExchange, more commonly called PEx, just announced that the website will shutdown on 15th of April. PinoyExchange.Com is one of the first and oldest website in the Philippines, the domain was registered in 1999 and the website have been running for 24 years.

PinoyExchange.com is the virtual home of many Filipinos here and abroad, you can could say that it is the first website in the country that offer UGC (user-generated content). The announcement did not provide any reason or explanation as to why the website is closing.

Here’s a short history of PinoyExchange.com as posted on the website;

During the early days of internet in the Philippines in the late 1990s, an idea emerged to create an online message board because at that time, the only way to communicate online were via chat sites and chat rooms.

On July 12, 1999, PinoyExchange was born founded by Michael Nolledo, Nix Nolledo and Jude Turcuato (Kaboom!) and later on joined by Michael Palacios (Mikoid) as a lead designer and technical consultant. Some early PEx members also became moderators to help out in managing content and discussions.

The website gained popularity through its exposure via televised UAAP basketball games where Jude (Kaboom!) was a commentator. During halftime, viewers were asked to express their views regarding the ongoing basketball games by posting comments on PEx. Thousands of students and alumni from UAAP member schools visited the site and created discussions revolving around the UAAP games.

PEx reached the 2,000 member mark before the turn of the century. This was at a time when the Philippine internet penetration was less than 2%.

Today, PEx has over 1.5M monthly users and has evolved to become an online forum where users from all over the world can connect and converse on a wide variety of topics.