NBI confident group behind takedown of gov't site will be found

MANILA, Philippines — The National Bureau of Investigation on Thursday said it is confident that authorities would be able to track down the persons behind the recent attack against a government website.

The Philippine government's website gov.ph was inaccessible on Thursday, a development that has been tied to the killing of nine activists during simultaneous police and military operations in Calabarzon last Sunday.

A group that called itself Cyber PH Human Rights has claimed responsibility for the cyber attack and has threatened to carry out similar operations against government websites that it claimed were complicit in "perpetuating barefaced lies on the killing of unarmed civilians and the worsening of the nation’s human rights situation."

"We are in close coordination right now with DICT (Department of Information and Communications Technology), there was indeed a denial-of-service attack. DICT already has a proper attribution and we will be requesting them the necessary details...so we could officially begin the investigation," NBI cybercrimes division head Victor Lorenzo said at a press briefing.

"We are confident...that we can track down the hackers responsible for the attacks," he added.

Lorenzo said there were claims that certain online databases have been compromised but these have not been proven.

"They could easily claim that...One of the motives in hacking websites or defacing websites or doing those attacks is for bragging purposes or, of course, plain and simple hacktivism. When they say that the databases have been compromised, we should not take that hook, line and sinker. We have to validate that," he added.