MANILA, Philippines – The Philippine Information and Communications
Technology Office (ICTO) has called on other state agencies to review
their Internet security measures amid recent hacking incidents of
government websites by supporters of China’s claim to the disputed
Scarborough Shoal.
In a statement, the ICTO said government Internet managers and
systems administrators should review the security of their respective
websites, “to ensure that homepage defacements like those that happened
several weeks… do not happen in the future.”
The most notable victims of hacking have been the Department of
Budget and Management, the University of the Philippines and, most
recently, the Philippine Atmospheric, Geophysical and Astronomical
Services Administration (Pagasa).
The defacement of Pagasa’s website took place on Wednesday. The
site’s homepage was vandalized by hackers “of still undetermined
origin,” the ICTO said. The www.pagasa.dost.gov.ph site, which citizens
and media organizations alike rely on for weather forecasts, was back
online three hours after the attack was discovered.
“The recent defacement of the PAGASA website only illustrates the
patent vulnerabilities inherent on some web platforms. We would like to
request system administrators of government websites to review their
source code for these security flaws,” ICTO executive director Louis
Casambre said in a statement.
A common flaw in these sites, he said, was the use of third-party
applications or “plug-ins,” or ready-made programs that make it easier
for IT managers to add features to a certain site without having to
write code.
Casambre said the ICTO has taken “definitive” steps to help other
agencies improve their IT security measures to ward off future hacking
attempts.
“It is unfortunate however that the Pagasa website was hacked so
soon. In light of this new development, we are looking at accelerating
our on-going effort,” he said.
In the meantime, Casambre said individual agencies should take steps on their own to help the understaffed and underfunded ICTO.
Like that of Pagasa’s, many government websites are still hosted on
in-house servers that may not be equipped with the latest security
features, making them easier to hack in to, according to Casambre.
He said hosting of government sites can be out-sourced to third-party
IT providers.
Outsourcing this service would also be less costly for
agencies. He said the Department of Science and Technology’s (DOST) own
servers, more secure than other government facilities, could also be
used by other agencies.
“As potential high-profile targets for hackers both local and
foreign, government system administrators must take the extra effort to
ensure that our servers are safe from cyber vandalism,” Science and
Technology Secretary Mario G. Montejo said in a statement.
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Paolo G. Montecillo | Philippine Daily Inquirer | May 10, 2012 | Article Link
