NBI tracking down hackers of national gov’t website

THE National Bureau of Investigation (NBI) on Thursday said it was investigating a cyber attack on the government’s main website, assuring the public that it would find and arrest those behind the incident.

In a virtual press briefing, NBI Cybercrime Division chief Victor Lorenzo confirmed that website www.gov.ph experienced a “denial of service attack.”

“We are confident that we can trackdown the hackers responsible for the attacks, kasi may mga previous incidents na (because there have been previous incidents),” Lorenzo said.

He made the assurance after Cyber PH for Human Rights declared that it was behind the recent distributed denial-of-service (DDoS) attack against www.gov.ph.

It said the attack was done in protest against the killings of unarmed civilians and vowed to do more DDoS attacks targeting other government websites.

But Lorenzo said he could not say whether or not the incident was in protest of the recent killing of nine activists in police raids, which has drawn heavy condemnation.

He said the Department of Information and Communications Technology (DICT) was “doing the proper attribution right now.”

“We will be requesting (DICT) the necessary details that they have doon sa (on the) attack so we could officially begin yung (the) investigation,” he said.

The NBI official also assured the public that future attacks could be averted once the hackers have been arrested.

“In 2012, there were massive attacks on government websites and we addressed these by arresting a very notorious hacker at that time kaya nag-subside yung attacks before sa government websites (that is why the cyber attacks then subsided),” he said.

“And this is going to be our approach also,” Lorenza added.

Also known as the National Government Portal, gov.ph aims to reduce physical visits for those who need to transact with the government. It remained inaccessible as of posting time.