NBI closing in on ‘hacktivists’—De Lima

Justice Secretary Leila de Lima on Monday said she had directed the National Bureau of Investigation to start profiling personalities allegedly behind the hacking and defacement of government websites in protest against the Cybercrime Prevention Act of 2012.

De Lima said the NBI had pinpointed “several” personalities since the attacks last week and was verifying whether they belonged to a group.

“They are looking whether these were deliberate acts or were done just for fun,” she told reporters.

On Monday morning, a Turkish group calling itself “Aksuvari Gandalf” defaced the website of the Department of Transportation and Communications (DOTC).

“The DOTC Management Information System (MIS) Office quickly published the original content of dotc.gov.ph using the most recent backup it had of the website,” said the department’s spokesperson, Nick Conti.

“The DOTC MIS and its hosting provider conduct regular backups of the website so we are prepared for cases of vandalism such as this,” Conti said.

No uploaded DOTC files were deleted or corrupted, he said. However, he said the attack was not connected with the campaign waged by “hacktivists.”

In a news briefing Monday, presidential spokesperson Edwin Lacierda said no amount of online attacks could stop the drafting beginning today at the Department of Justice of the implementing rules and regulations of the cybercrime law.

“I understand it’s open to the public. Certainly there will be invitations to the media and to the IT community because the focus here is cybercrime protection: How does one address the cybercrime provisions and how does one implement those provisions?”  With reports from Christine O. Avendaño, Paolo G. Montecillo and Michael Lim Ubac

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Tags: Cybercrime Prevention Act , Internet , Judiciary , NBI , technology