Websites of Senate, House under attack

MANILA, Philippines — The websites of the House of Representatives and the Senate are apparently under cyber attack.

The lower chamber voluntarily took down its web portal yesterday after “suspicious and unusual activities” were detected, according to House secretary general Reginald Velasco.

He said the move is a “precautionary measure to double-check and reinforce the cybersecurity measures,” ensuring that “vulnerabilities” have been addressed.

“We regret to inform the public that the official website of the House of Representatives has been voluntarily taken offline once again. Despite our security enhancements, we have detected suspicious and unusual activities that necessitate further scrutiny,” he said.

Velasco added that their primary concern is to “guarantee the safety, integrity and reliability of our digital platform for the citizens we serve.”

“We understand the inconvenience this might cause and we ask for public understanding as we work diligently to address these concerns,” he said.

Velasco said the House’s commitment to “transparency and open communication remains unwavering. We will provide updates as soon as we have more information.”

The House website was taken down before 1 p.m. yesterday.

Arnold de Castro, head of the House IT team, said mitigation has been done on the original port penetrated by the hackers.

“While we were doing re-scanning, there were other backdoors that hackers were exploiting to get into the system,” De Castro said.

“We opted to take it down until we harden the system with securities. Hopefully, if we can do this within the day, we can restore the website later (last night),” he added.

De Castro said the House website registered a high number of “visitors” during the period that it was open, but “it does not necessarily mean that they are hackers.”

The URL congress.gov.ph received the following message on its homepage on Sunday: “YOU’VE BEEN HACKED. YOU’VE BEEN HACKED. HAVE A NICE DAY.”

It was accompanied by a caricature of a laughing man and the message “HAPPY APRIL FULLZ KAHIT OCTOBER PALANG! HACKED BY 3MUSKETEERZ 15-October-2023 || 11:31:24 AM.”

The Senate website received a “spike of attacks” on the same day the