‘Troll farms’ maybe behind hacking of Manila City’s COVID vax registration page – Moreno

FILE PHOTO: Manila City Mayor Isko Moreno. (Photo from his office)

MANILA, Philippines — “Troll farms” were possibly behind the hacking of Manila City’s COVID-19 vaccination registration website, Mayor Francisco “Isko Moreno” Domagoso said Friday.

In a report, the city government said there was a “very unusual scenario/occurrence” on the website which was “clearly BOT triggered.”

“Based on our experience, we highly suspect that whoever is doing this has a troll farm generating machinery,” the report said.

The report also noted that those behind the hacking incident created automation to keep refreshing the city government’s vaccination registration page.

It added that there were 133 to more than 200 requests per minute detected, totaling at least 1.02 million requests sent to the website on the night of August 4.

READ: Hackers attack COVID vaccination website as thousands jam single jab site — Manila mayor

“The objective is very obvious: To have the website reach its threshold in order to create downtime error 502,” the report said.

“This will result in difficulty for registrants to register into our system/program. The primordial aim or goal for this action is to take down the website so that no constituents/individuals will be able to register at www.manilacovid19vaccine.ph/registration.php,” it added.

In the end, the report said the requests made were traced to five IP addresses. The report has yet to specify the identity of those behind the hacking.

Moreno addressed the issue in his Capital Report livestream where he said the incident is already being investigated.

“Kayo naman mag-iisip muna kayo kasi buhay ng tao ang malalagay sa alanganin,” Moreno said.

“Isipin ninyo din kayo may nanay, may tatay, may anak na puwede din magka-COVID… Pag-isipan ninyo maigi kung sino man gumagawa niyan,” he added.

KGA