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House website hacked

House website hacked
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The House of Representatives' official website was targeted early Sunday by cyber hackers who managed to alter its various sections with troll faces.

According to House Secretary General Reginald Velasco, the House's official website "experienced unauthorized access" and that they exhausted all efforts from the concerned agencies to restore the chamber's site to its normal functioning.

"Immediate steps have been taken to address the issue, and we are working closely with the Department of Information and Communications Technology, Cybercrime Investigation and Coordinating Center and law enforcement agencies concerned to investigate the matter," Velasco said.

Velasco and the entire Information and Communication Technology Service of the House were apparently unaware of the attack and only learned upon through inquiries from the media.

The secretary general, meanwhile, issued a stern warning to the public to "be cautious of any suspicious emails or communications that claim to be from the House."

"We are committed to ensure the security and integrity of our digital platforms, and we will implement additional measures to prevent such incidents in the future," Velasco said.

The hacking of the House's website occurred just two days after the Department of Science and Technology systems and the Philippine National Police had also experienced hacking.

DICT Undersecretary Jeffrey Ian Dy had said that around 10,000 records of some experts' data from the DoST were leaked.

It was the Philippine Health Insurance Corp., which initially suffered hacking in September by ransomware named Medusa that demanded $300,000 or approximately P16 million in exchange of the stolen data, also followed by a cyber-attack on the Philippine Statistics Authority.

Meanwhile, the PhilHealth has resumed online services after a week of the hacking incident.

According to Dy, as early as September, the DICT had received the report on the hacking of the DoST system.

However, he explained that the agency had recently made it a top priority to fix the problem in PhilHeath and PSA.

Dy claimed that the suspects responsible for posting and leaking data from PSA and DoST are identical.

In other developments, the DICT said that it is already investigating the hacking of the House website.

"We are in constant communication and coordination with the HoR and are currently investigating the extent of the said incident. We shall provide further updates to the public as soon as they become available," said DICT spokesperson and Assistant Secretary for Legal Affairs Renato A. Paraiso on Sunday.

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