AFP endures cyberattacks ‘almost daily’, none successful so far — Brawner

Hackers have been regularly trying to attack the Armed Forces of the Philippines' cyber system and networks, but none of it has been successful, said AFP chief Gen. Romeo Brawner during an interview in a news forum organized by the Foreign Correspondents Association of the Philippines on Thursday.

"We experience this almost everyday. Gusto nilang pasukin ang ating (They are trying to infiltrate our) networks, but we're happy to note that so far, these are not successful," he said.

"We believe that some of the attacks are foreign, some of them are local," he added.

Recently, several government agencies have been the victim of cyber attacks, including the Philippine Health Insurance Corp., the Philippine Statistics Authority, the Department of Science and Technology as well as the House of Representatives.

A reported cyber attack in 2021, which caused the leakage of military data on the dark web, has been investigated, according to Brawner. The public has no reason to be alarmed since the information leaked was only "routinary and old documents," he said.

"We had a hacking before, I think about two years ago, and some of the files — not really the sensitive files — are still circulating in the dark web. We investigated this right away, and we found out that these are old files."

Brawner said the military organization has so far warded off attacks due to the establishment of cyber defense mechanisms.

"We're hoping that we could sustain that, the hackers are always looking for loopholes," he added.

AFP Cyber Command

Brawner said the AFP targets to establish a Cyber Security Command, an improvement on the military's current Cyber Security Group.

"With the increased threats that we are facing and the importance of the cyber domain as a new domain in warfare, we thought of coming up with these changes like the development of the Cyber Command," he said.

Brawner said this plan still needs thorough study and approval by President Ferdinand Marcos Jr. as some changes in the AFP organization are expected upon the establishment of the new service command.

The AFP eyes to complete the study within the year, he added.

Brawner said they are also eyeing the recruitment of "cyber warriors", or a squad of soldiers with excellent cyber defense capabilities.

He, however, said the cyber command services will only be limited to the AFP and not to the entire nation.

"We cannot do that, it's impossible with the current facilities and the equipment that we have," he added. "That's why we are closely working with the DICT on that matter."