UP System website attacked by pro-China hackers
Hackers proclaim: “We come from China! Huangyan Island is Ours!”
The two-week old standoff between the Philippines and China in the Panatag (Scarborough) Shoal located in the West Philippine Sea has spilled over into the cyberspace. The website of the University of the Philippines (UP) has been defaced early Friday morning by suspected pro-China hackers. UP is the national university of this Southeast Asian country.
Hackers uploaded a map of the West Philippine Sea (or South China Sea) and its nearby countries in the landing page of the UP website. The map has labels in Chinese characters. The screenshot below was taken by Lawrence Velasco, accounting and finance instructor at the UP College of Business Administration:
Velasco discovered the website defacement at around 4 AM. He promptly tweeted certain Philippine media personalities and organizations about the matter, explaining later on that he asked the media to contact UP since he was in France and “didn’t know how to contact the university aside from Twitter.
Danilo Arao, the University’s Assistant Vice President for Public Affairs, denounced the attack, describing it as “an attempt to deprive the UP community of vital information, particularly the schedule of commencement exercises in nine UP campuses and the April 2012 issue of the UP Newsletter which was uploaded last April 17.”
A downtime notice has since been posted on the UP system website: “The University of the Philippines System website (http://www.up.edu.ph) is currently undergoing maintenance. The UP Computer Center is conducting an evaluation of the website and its contents. This website will be restored to its operational status as soon as the maintenance checks have been completed. Thank you.”
In a phone interview, Arao explained that the website’s security is a “shared concern” of the UP System Information Office and the UP Computer Center. “We’re trying to check the vulnerability of our content management systems,” Arao said.
He added that although the hackers “merely uploaded a JPEG file in the landing page,” they will also look for possible malicious files embedded in the system. He reiterated that the hacking incident is isolated to the UP system website. Arao teaches journalism in the UP College of Mass Communication.
Related news:
China, tumangging dalhin ang isyu ng Panatag Shoal sa international court (GMA News Online)
China summons PHL envoy over standoff at Panatag Shoal (GMA News Online)
Personal: Professor Arao maintains his own website. This blogger enrolled in his online journalism class during his undergraduate days at UP CMC.
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that is scary ,the chinese hackers are up to Philippines internet sites .I hope they already fixed the UP website.
Yes, Ms Tess. If the computer system of the country’s top university isn’t safe, then it’s really alarming.
I think we have a better chance winning a war in cyberspace than a real one but I hope they find a diplomatic way to settle the rift between the two countries.
I don’t know what to think now, but at least these is safe fighting than pointing fires and tank for our land
No worries. PH hackers are the most notorious!
You forgot hackers in the West. LOL
I’ve heard that the Filipino hackers retaliate on Chinese sites. The battle is no longer on Scarborough Shoal or Spratlys. It’s heading on to which country has the BEST Hacker (Philippines or China). Yet this is a great eye-opener for the both governments to strengthen security on their websites.
Thanks for your comment. And I guess the same thing goes for us bloggers, too. That’s the reason I chose to share this blog in our FBW community.
This is scary! We should be secured enough! I heard about the news about Scarborough but this alarmed me! We should be safe and take care of our websites! 🙂
Hi there. I agree. I shall be posting updates soon as to how UP will respond to this.
Hacking as I see is for business, for money… This is timely info.
This pretty alarming. i hope no harm done in here.
Good thing that is the case, for now. But we don’t know what might happen next time.