By Ronron
January 4, 2008
The websites of three government agencies were discovered last Thursday to have been diverted to the website of a popular theme park, officials said Friday.
A check made that day on the websites of the Department of Justice (www.doj.gov.ph), Criminal Investigation and Detection Group of the Philippine National Police (www.cidg.pnp.gov.ph), and the Information Technology and E-Commerce Council (www.itecc.gov.ph) all led to the website of Enchanted Kingdom.
The DOJ and ITECC websites, however, were restored on the same day, unlike that of the CIDG, which remains diverted to Enchanted Kingdom as of Friday.
According to DOJ spokesman State Prosecutor Geronimo Sy, the department found about the diversion of its website to Enchanted Kingdom at around 2pm Thursday.
But it was restored before 4pm after its staff worked on it.
Sy said the same thing happened to the ITECC website, although he has no specific details yet.
CIDG spokesman Felix Vargas said in a separate interview by phone that they also just learned about the diversion of its website last Thursday through the media.
But he said their website has long been inactive and they are no longer aware what happened to it.
Nevertheless, Vargas said the agency’s Anti-Transnational Crimes Division proceeded to investigate the matter.
He said the division will seek an explanation from the Philippine Long Distance Telephone (PLDT) company, which was the server of their website.
On the part of the DOJ, Sy said Justice Secretary Raul Gonzales has tasked the National Bureau of Investigation (NBI) to also look into the incident.
Initially though, the feedback from the NBI indicates that “it might not have been hacked,” said Sy.
“Initially, they are saying it could be a technical glitch. They call it cross-reference of the domain of the server or the host company. As to why, that is the conduct of further investigation,” Sy said.
With this, Sy sort of downplayed any security implications of the incident. “The diversion might not be malicious at all,” he said.
But he clarified that until the final investigation report comes in on Monday from the NBI, they are not discounting the possibility that the website was hacked.
Sought for comment, Enchanted Kingdom Public Relations Officer Lovely Ong-iko said in a phone interview that they were surprised with the incident when they learned about it from the news on Thursday night.
“We do not know why we are involved in that alleged hacking incident. We have conducted an internal investigation to find it out,” Ong-iko said./DMS
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