CIDG to revive anti-hacking team

MANILA, Philippines - Alarmed by the number of attacks on government websites, the Criminal Investigation and Detection Group (CIDG) of the Philippine National Police (PNP) said it will revive its Government Computer Security and Incident Response Team (GCSIRT).

In a statement, CIDG chief Director Samuel Pagdilao Jr. said from 2003 to this year, they recorded 1,340 attacks in the form of website defacement against 81 government agencies, including the website of the PNP which he said was defaced 15 times.

Pagdilao said government websites that registered the most number of hackings are that of the Department of Science and Technology, which had 73 incidents of website defacements; Philippine Institute for Development Studies, 36; Department of Health and Department of Labor and Employment, 17 each; National Economic Development Authority and the Department of Social Welfare and Development, 11 each.

Other government websites that were also hacked, according to the CIDG, were that of the House of Representatives, Office of the Vice President, Office of the Ombudsman, Philippine Drug Enforcement Agency, Department of Justice and the Supreme Court.

In the past nine years, Pagdilao said the CIDG has also recorded a total of 340 website defacements of national government units’ websites and 1,038 incidents involving local government agencies.

Website defacement is an attack on a website that changes the visual appearance of the site or a webpage. These are typically the work of system crackers, who break into a Web server and replace the hosted website with one of their own, the CIDG said.

According to Senior Superintendent Gilbert Sosa, chief of the CIDG’s Anti-Transnational and Cyber Crime Division (ATCCD), website defacement activities against government agencies were most prevalent in 2006.

Hacking incidents gradually declined in 2007 and 2008 only to rise in 2009 onwards, he said.

“Our analysis of the data shows that a total of 289 different individuals or groups were responsible for defacing government websites. The group ‘The Hacker’ has the highest number of defacements to its credit, followed by ‘Ashiyane Digital Security Team,’” Sosa said.

He added that hackers deface government websites to gain recognition in the hacking community. “Website defacement does not compromise the system of a certain website. It does not get as much publicity as the other forms of attack. However, its impact on the credibility of the agency should not be undermined,” the ATCCD chief said.

Sosa cited the example of what hackers did to the website of the Philippine Overseas Employment Administration (POEA), replacing its website with pornographic material. He added that in other countries, such an attack on a government website is already an attack on their sovereignty.

 He said that in the absence of a law that will address cybercrimes and the lack of a national policy on the security of government digital infrastructure, what can be done at this time is for government agencies to take serious action in strengthening their information technology security.

According to Sosa, at present, there is no lead agency or law enforcement unit in charge with cybercrimes in the country. The CIDG he said, is limited only to its role in the investigation of cybercrimes through the GCSIRT, which was disbanded in 2008.

“It is on this premise that the CIDG is planning to revive the GCSIRT, a counter-cybercrime operating team of the CIDG that is tied up with the Asia Pacific Computer Emergency Response Team,” he said.