by J. Irving
Haha I cannot resist answering back this editorial from Inquirer. I recently wrote the commander of the Army Cyber Battalion: “Bakit kahit sa cyber, talo tayo sa propaganda?” (Why is that even in cyber, we are losing in propaganda?)
I know, the Army is becoming the favorite punching bag in shaming somebody newsworthy for lack of competence in the cyberspace. Remember the April Fool’s Day cyber-attack by Pinoy LulzSec on the Army?The hacker group announced and published in the newspaper that they have breached the database of the military, exposing almost 20,000 soldiers whose information, injuries and missions were in file. By creating a link to their dump, LulzSec did not care of endangering the lives of soldiers in the battlefield! Likewise, long time ago, when hacking was still limited to defacing of web sites, for the purpose of bragging rights, the Philippine Army homepage was vandalized by a group of aspiring hackers posting lewd uncompromising pictures of gay men with big bold sign, “Philippine Army Gay Club”. Actually, it is the Army which is constantly barraged by cyber attacks – prompting military leadership to organize the Cyber Battalion and also their counterparts in GHQ, Navy and the Air Force!
From then on, I became an avid advocate of cybersecurity! I believe cybersecurity should be inherent role to any organization and their every individual member. It cannot be imposed by mere reporting it to the press! Cyber-attacks can come from everywhere, even from a person belonging inside their own organization. Bulatlat and Altermidya-People’s Alternative Media Network must be aware of these. They should therefore properly defend themselves from any attacks. They are expected to fortify their own territory by using strong passwords, firewall, virus/spyware protection, backups, etc.
Bulatlat and Altermidya-People’s Alternative Media Network must know better where to report the breach – not to the media. They have mentioned Republic Act No. 10175 or the Cybercrime Prevention Act of 2012 in the news article. So, they must therefore be aware that the incident should be tackled by the Cybercrime Investigation and Coordinating Center (CICC), as mandated by the same law. The only reason, I believe, why it came out in the news, is propaganda – the story will sell!
In this case, I advised the Cyber Battalion, by itself, to bring the complaint to CICC, which has jurisdiction to cybercrimes. By doing so, they would be toeing the line in accordance to law. The Army will be under the law, not above the law.
Your historical logs and snapshots, as evidence, will set you free!
The disabling of websites belonging to red-tagged organizations does not fall under the mission of the Army or Cyber Battalion. The accusation of conducting distributed denial of service (DDoS), which involved flooding their websites with superfluous requests to overload the host, is false and very malicious. The existence of the Cyber Battalion is more on the defensive posture. It was created to protect Army information network assets.
Cyber Arnis 