DOST asks DICT to probe cyberattacks on news websites

FILE PHOTO: REUTERS/Illustration

MANILA, Philippines — The Department of Science and Technology (DOST) has asked the Department of Information and Communications Technology (DICT) to investigate the cyberattacks against red-tagged websites.

Science Undersecretary Rowena Guevara admitted it was the DOST, which provided the IP address linked to the distributed denial of service (DDoS) attacks against the websites of alternative news outlets Bulatlat and Altermidya, and rights group Karapatan.

She, however, did not identify the agency to which the IP addresses were assigned.

“We’d rather not put any added burden on the DICT in undertaking the investigation. We would prefer that they do it properly and clinically without the involvement of the public,” she said in an interview on ANC.

In its report on June 22, Swedish digital forensic group Qurium Media Foundation recorded “brief but frequent” DDoS attacks against the three websites between May and June.

During a DDoS attack, the perpetrators “flood” the targeted machines or resources with superfluous requests to overload the host and disrupt its services, rendering the websites temporarily inaccessible to the general public.

Qurium traced these malicious attacks to computers with IP addresses 202.90.137.42, belonging to the Philippine Research, Education, Government Information Network, which is built and run by the DOST’s Advanced Science and Technology Institute — and 202.90.137.43, from the OG2, the Office of the Assistant Chief of Staff for Intelligence of the Philippine Army.