DICT eyes local hackers in House website breach

MANILA, Philippines — The cybersecurity breach on the web portal of the House of Representatives may have been carried out by local hackers, the Department of Information and Communications Technology (DICT) announced yesterday.

“CERT-PH (Philippine National Computer Emergency Response Team) is conducting an investigation to determine if sensitive data has been exfiltrated by the local threat actors,” the DICT said in a statement.

The department said the breach could be the handiwork of local hackers, noting that the wording used in the defacement of the House website was in Filipino.

Hackers who identified themselves as the “3musketeerz” uploaded over the weekend an image of the “Trollface” meme on congress.gov.ph’s Photo Journals section, bearing a warning that the site had been hacked.

The hackers posted the message “Happy APRIL FULLZ KAHIT OCTOBER PALANG! FIX YOUR WEBSITE.”

The DICT refused to identify the persons involved in the hacking while the investigation is ongoing.

“The next stages of the probe, which include threat actor attribution and case build-up, will be pursued by the Cybercrime Investigation and Coordinating Center, in coordination with our law enforcement agencies,” the DICT said.

The House of Representatives is bracing for a worse attack on its data system, saying the cybersecurity breach could be a test of its “vulnerability.”

House secretary general Reginald Velasco said the chamber’s IT team was expecting the website to be restored yesterday, with a “more secured system.”

“Immediate steps have been taken to address the issue. But this could not last long given the fast phase technology used by the hackers,” Velasco said.

“Sometimes within 24 hours, hackers can come up with a more sophisticated technology. It only takes a click to the link and the entire system gets contaminated,” he added.

Velasco said the House’s anti-virus software is updated, but the DICT informed the chamber that the system has “many vulnerabilities,” making it susceptible to hacking.

The House of Representatives is also coordinating with the National Bureau of Investigation to look into the breach, according to Velasco.

“The IT team has been instructed to prepare