Hackers deface NTC website over slow Internet

MANILA, Philippines – The official website of the National Telecommunications Commission (NTC) was hacked on Sunday to protest slow Internet speed in the Philippines.

The NTC website was defaced with a black background containing a message of the hacker group, Anonymous Philippines, who are calling for the NTC’s attention to address the country's Internet connectivity problems. The site is currently not loading as of press time.

In their message, the hackers specified that they were sympathizing with Filipino netizens for the “overpromised” but “under-delivered” system of the country’s Internet service.

“We, Anonymous Philippines, are sympathizing with our fellow Filipino netizens whose battle cries are the ‘OVER PROMISED, UNDER DELIVERED’ system of our internet service providers; it is the neigh direct proportionality of our internet speeds and bandwidths in relation to price. We, as a country, suffer on the bottom of the internet pyramid having one of the lowest internet speeds while paying the same amount, or even higher, compared to other countries; adding DATA CAPPING to our ‘UNLIMITED’ data plans sums up to our great burden as an avid follower of the internet – for studies and such,” the message read.

“We are calling forth the attention of the NATIONAL TELECOMMUNICATIONS COMMISSION for this matter in hand; with this we talk as a whole...as ONE, we are asking for fairness in charging and serving our data services; Unlimited should be patterned to its name – ‘UNLIMITED'; not ‘UNLIMITED with 800MB cap.’ A 2 MBPS speed should never be a 56kbps (kilobytes per second). A 98 percent service reliability should be always on the 98% part, not the 2 percent one,” it added.

Anonymous Philippines ended their note with lines “we do not forgive” and “we do not forget and “expect us!”

According to reports, there were two versions of the defaced NTC website. The first was a black background showing “V” of “V for Vendetta” overlaid with the message of the hackers and the second was a black background with Anonymous Philippines’s logo.

Aside from the defaced home page of the NTC website, a background song “Upuan” popularized by Gloc-9 also played on loop on the website.

The hacking of the NTC website occurred following the agency’s pilot testing of Internet speeds of four Internet service providers last week. Bayantel emerged as the slowest provider.

The Philippines was named as the country with the second slowest download speed in Asia in the Ookla Household Download Index released last May.

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