GORDON INSISTS BRC PROBE TO CONTINUE: Sen. Richard Gordon maintains that investigations being conducted by the Blue Ribbon Committee on the alleged anomalies in the procurement of face masks, face shields and personal protective equipment (PPEs) by the Department of Health (DOH) through the Procurement Service of the Department of Budget Management (PS-DBM) will continue. (Screengrab/Senate PRIB)
MANILA, Philippines 鈥� Amid the ongoing Senate blue ribbon probe into the alleged irregularities in the government鈥檚 procurement of pandemic response supplies, the official website of Senator Richard Gordon was hit by a 鈥渃oordinated online attack鈥� causing the site to shut down for several hours, the senator鈥檚 office said.
In a statement on Wednesday, Gordon鈥檚 office said the attack happened last October 4.
鈥淲e view such service outage or disruption as a serious concern as its timing comes when the Senate Blue Ribbon panel is investigating alleged irregularities in government procurement for COVID-19 supplies and equipment,鈥� said Myke Cruz, an information technology officer in Gordon鈥檚 office.
According to Cruz, a distributed denial of service (DDoS) attack, usually 鈥減atched through the dark web by nefarious individuals in exchange for a high price,鈥� caused a web services shutdown from 7 a.m. to 1 p.m.
Administrators of dickgordon.ph were able to contain the problem by barring entry of traffic from outside the Philippines at around 1 p.m., Gordon鈥檚 office said.
However, a foreign-led attack 鈥減ersisted鈥� until 3:04 p.m.
鈥淧ast instances have linked DDoS attacks to destabilizing the online presence of an opposing party,鈥� Gordon鈥檚 office added.
His office said traffic requests to Gordon鈥檚 website primarily came from China, the United States, Ukraine, and other Southeast Asian countries, causing the 鈥渦sual bandwidth traffic to rise dramatically from less than 100 megabytes to almost 1.8 gigabytes within an hour鈥檚 span.鈥�
鈥淎ng nangyari, pwede mo ihalintulad sa sari-sari store, na usually may regular na bilang ng customer na bumibili sa loob ng isang minuto. Ngayon, biglang dinumog ng lahat ng residente ng Metro Manila ang sari-sari store para bumili, kaya di lahat matutugunan on time,鈥� Cruz said.
(What happened can be likened to a neighborhood store where there is a regular number of customers. Now, the store was mobbed by all the residents of Metro Manila, that鈥檚 why their purchases can鈥檛 be addressed on time.)
Gordon鈥檚 office explained that the 鈥渂otnet owner鈥� or the originator of the attack 鈥渦sually develops a malicious software or malware distributed through email or website attachments.鈥�
鈥淥wners of these infected computers unknowingly host this malware, which the attacker adds to the botnet to simultaneously make requests on a specific website or cloud service,鈥� it added.
The Senate blue ribbon committee, which Gordon chairs, is in the middle of an investigation into the government鈥檚 pandemic purchases last year.