14 DAY TRIAL // Anonymous Philippines has breached and defaced several government websites, including the official site of the Office of the President of the Philippines (president.gov.ph).
While on most of the affected websites, the hacktivists have published their message by replacing the site’s index page with their own, on the one of the president, they have posted it in the “latest news” section, making it look as a legitimate article.
“Greetings, President Aquino! We have watched how you signed into law a bill that endangers and tramples upon the netizens’ freedom of speech and expression. Now, we are silent witnesses as to how you are mishandling the Sabah issue,” the hackers wrote in their statement.
“We did not engage the Malaysian hackers who invaded our cyberspace since we expected you to appropriately and judiciously act on the same, but you failed us. You did nothing while our fellow brothers are being butchered by the Malaysian forces, and while our women and children become subject of human rights abuses,” they added.
“If you can’t act on the issue as the Philippine President, at least do something as a fellow Filipino. We are watching.”
According to The Pinoy Tech News, the other hacked websites belong to various municipalities, an athletic association and the Directorate for Research and Development of the Philippine National Police.
The Office of the President has issued a statement on the incident.
“At around 1:30 a.m. today, we detected a breach when an errant sentence critical of the government on the Sabah issue was found to have been inserted in one of the news items within the website. No further intrusions were made as the internal security protocols were activated,” the statement reads.
At the time of writing, some of the affected sites were restored, but some of them still displayed the defacement message posted by the hackers. The president’s website is redirecting visitors to the 1.president.gov.ph subdomain.