DDoS Attacks On Philippine Government Websites

It is being reported that there was a spike in cyber attacks on Philippine government web sites, including a key Malaccañang agency, following the United Nations International Arbitration court’s ruling in favour of the Philippines on the West Philippine Sea territorial dispute. However, it was not clear if the attacks were carried out by parties associated with China itself, as they apparently emanated from multiple countries. So far, the government has not been able to pinpoint the origin of the attacks. All were categorised as DDoS, or Distributed Denial of Service actions. Stephen Gates, chief research intelligence analyst at NSFOCUS, provider of advanced security solutions and DDoS mitigation specialists commented below.

Stephen Gates, Chief Research Intelligence Analyst at NSFOCUS:

“The fact that miscreants were able to negatively impact 68 government-based websites, demonstrates that these entities have little if any DDoS defences in place.  Today, DDoS attacks can easily be defeated with the right Cloud DDoS Protection Services combined with on-premises DDoS Protection Solutions.  Why don’t organisations already have these defences in place?  Most likely its due to the belief, “Why would anyone attack us?”  Any website can be taken offline without DDoS defences in place.  It’s just a matter of time….

Often the sources of DDoS attacks are not the attacking machines.  They’re just unknowingly infected, and can be located anywhere in the world.  The real source of the attack is from the individuals who have command & control over the botnet infected machines in the first place.  Those individuals could be lying on a beach, climbing a mountain, riding in a car, or having a coffee in a café. Geographic location is of little importance.”