The House of Representatives announced Thursday that its IT team has successfully blocked a staggering 541.66 million attacks on its website on Wednesday, March 13, indicating what industry experts call a Distributed Denial-of-Service or DDoS attack.
House secretary-general Reginald S. Velasco made the announcement during the regular press briefing at the House Thursday, March 14, commending its ICTS (information and communication technology service) team for fending off what could have proven as serious breaches in the chamber’s website.
“A staggering 53.72 million attacks were recorded between 8 a.m. and 9 a.m. yesterday (Wednesday) originating from Indonesia, the United States, Columbia, India and the Russian Federation, which may not be accurate if they are using a VPN,” Velasco said.
“And at 2:52 pm yesterday (Wednesday), a whopping 487.93 million attacks were also recorded, from sources in Tunisia, Thailand and Greece, which again may not be accurate, which brings the total amount of attacks to 541.66 million,” he added.
Velasco said the ICTS team assured the House leadership that they have blocked and managed all of the attacks through the Cloudflare service. The tech team displayed an “under maintenance notice,” restarted the servers, and continued normal operations.
He bared that the incident has also been reported to the Department of ICT and that no further attacks have been observed since, as the ICTS team continues to monitor for unusual Internet activity on the website.
“We commend the ICTS Team for its nimble and perceptive handling of the DDoS attacks on the website. The Congress website has been under attack in the past from hackers, and we are grateful for a competent team of IT professionals who vigilantly repel these attacks,” Velasco declared.
“We call on the DICT to investigate these DDoS attacks and ascertain where they are really coming from, if they are local or foreign hackers or a collaboration of both. We must know the reason for these attacks, is it for money or for political reasons as they may have been contracted to destabilize our institution for whatever purpose,” he added.
Velasco then asked the ICTS team to be more vigilant against these attacks.
“The Filipino people are counting on us to bring them relevant information through our website, so it must remain up and running at all times,” he said.
“Lastly, we assure the people that the attacks have been repelled and put under control, and no further malicious activity on the website has been recorded. Makakaasa po kayo na mas matindi po ang ating resolve sa Kongreso kaysa sa mga hackers na gustong sirain ang ating website.”
