541.7M cyberattacks on Congress website repelled

The attacks, he said, originated from Indonesia, the United States, Colombia, India, and the Russian Federation which may not be accurate if they are using a virtual private network (VPN). (File Photo: House of Representatives of the Philippines/Facebook)

MANILA – House of Representatives Secretary-General Reginald Velasco said the unusual surge in internet traffic on the Congress website has been recorded on Wednesday.

He said the House’s Information and Communication Technology Service (ICTS) team recorded 53.7 million attacks, described as “distributed denial-of-service” (DDoS) attacks seeking to overwhelm target websites and render them inaccessible, between 8 a.m. and 9 a.m. alone.

The attacks, he said, originated from Indonesia, the United States, Colombia, India, and the Russian Federation which may not be accurate if they are using a virtual private network (VPN).

Velasco said the attacks ballooned to over 488 million, including from Tunisia, Thailand, and Greece, as of 2:52 p.m., bringing the number to 541.7 million.

He, however, said the ICTS Team “blocked and managed all of these attacks through the Cloudflare service, displayed an ‘under maintenance notice,’ restarted the servers and continued normal operations.”

The attacks on the Congress website have already been reported to the Department of Information and Technology (DICT).

“No further attacks have been observed since, and the ICTS Team continues to monitor for unusual internet activity on the website,” Velasco said in a press conference on Thursday.

He commended the ICTS team for quick and perceptive handling of the DDoS attacks.

“We are grateful for a competent team of IT professionals who vigilantly repel these cyberattacks,” Velasco said.

Velasco also called on the DICT to ascertain whether the attacks came from foreign or local hackers.

“We call on the ICTS 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.