The main government website, www.gov.ph, was inaccessible on Thursday following a cyberattack that was claimed by a group protesting the killing of activists in Southern Luzon.
The portal was hit by a DOS or denial of service attack, said National Bureau of Investigation Cybercrime Division chief Victor Lorenzo. He could not immediately say who was behind it. A DOS attack overwhelms a website to the point that it is inaccessible.
A group called Cyber PH for Human Rights circulated an e-mail to reporters owning up to the attack, ABS-CBN News reported. The group said it put down Gov.ph to protest the killings last Sunday, which was condemned by the UN.
"There was indeed a denial of service attack," Lorenzo said. The Department of Information and Communications Technology is leading the preliminary inquiry, after which, the NBI will step in for the criminal investigation.
"We are confident that we can track down the hackers responsible for the attack kasi may mga previous incidents na," he said.
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Eight men and one woman were killed as the authorities executed search warrants before dawn on Sunday. The killings happened in simultaneous police and military operations in the Batangas, Cavite, Laguna and Rizal provinces.
The killings happened two days after President Rodrigo Duterte told police and military to "kill communists right away" and "ignore human rights."
