The Senate reported yesterday a “spike” in access requests to its website last Saturday afternoon, the same day the website of the House of Representatives was hacked, Senate Secretary Renato Bantug Jr. said Tuesday.
“Last Saturday, shortly before or around noon, we experienced a spike — technically it is called requests — to access our website. It was a lot more than usual,” Bantug told reporters.
He noted that the requests that originated from various countries such as Germany, the United States, and Vietnam were rejected by the Senate’s “anti-hacking software.”
“Fortunately for us, it was all mitigated. None of the requests that the application considered malicious succeeded,” he said.
Its counterpart, the House of Representatives’ website, was breached and defaced by hackers who identified themselves as 3MUSKETEERZ on Sunday.
The website is still inaccessible to the public due to “suspicious and unusual activities.”
‘No confidential data’
Bantug clarified that no confidential data is stored on the Senate’s website.
“What we have online at the Senate website are essentially public documents — records of proceedings, committee hearings, etc.,” he said.
“The only possible private data they can mine would be our email server, but none of the senators use our email servers,” he noted.
He continued: “So it would not have been compromised at all because we’re not using the Senate email server.”
Bragging rights
Director III Mariano Antonio Sulit of the Electronic Data Processing and Management Information System Bureau echoed the observation.
“It would just be bragging rights. There is no confidential data there. It’s all public documents,” Sulit said when asked what information hackers could get from the website.
He explained that those behind the hacking attempts could not have been in Germany or the other countries mentioned.
“They were bots, actually,” he said.
The lower chamber’s website was the latest victim of cyber-attacks that targeted government offices and agencies.
The Philippine Health Insurance Corporation announced on 22 September the temporary shutdown of its website and its membership portal to contain an “information security incident.”
Weeks later, the Department of Information and Communications Technology reported that the Philippine Statistics Authority, which implements the rollout of the National ID, also suffered a data breach.