Hacking on Heaven’s Door

So, the DOJ website got hacked. Hmm, well, there was no serious damage, except maybe a little embarrassment on the part of the department. The hack took place sometime after the New Year celebration. Apparently, instead of featuring the picture of Secretary Gonzalez, the website displayed a flash presentation of Enchanted Kingdom complete with background music. Cute.

The Secretary was not pleased of course. He raised security concerns and the possibility that while the hack did not do any harm, it was very much malicious. He even posed the possibility that it might just be a test hack in preparation for a more destructive attack. Thus, he called the NBI anti-fraud and IT division to investigate and even contacted PLDT, the company hosting the government website, to give a report regarding the incident.

While I was listening to this, I was wondering what is actually in the DOJ website that the Secretary would speculate that it might get hacked again. I honestly believe that whoever did this was simply bored during the Christmas break. I think it could have been any government site actually. Perhaps the DOJ website was randomly chosen or maybe the culprit was simply banking on the fact that the Secretary would get irritated, talk to the media and give him the publicity that he wanted. In which case, it seems like mission accomplished.

Of course this does not mean that I am tolerant of these things. I honestly think that such an act is criminal, one that gets in the way of public service. The Filipino people are paying for that website and whenever the website does not properly function, that is time and money down the drain. Furthermore, I think this is a waste of talent. True, such an act shows the ingenuity and skill of Filipinos in I.T. (I’m betting it’s a Filipino because it featured Enchanted Kingdom) but what good is it if it is directed at such useless ends? We have what it takes to be the best in the world. Now, if only we can focus our energies towards something more productive then maybe we would become a better nation.

I hope the investigation actually leads somewhere. It would be a very sad thing if the government cannot stay ahead of bad people when it comes to IT training and development. How then can it enforce our laws and protect even more sensitive information if it is susceptible to these petty hacks? Simply put, it cannot.

P. S. My apologies by the way to anyone who wanted to write a blog about this topic. I know this news was practically screaming to become a blog entry. I was thinking of a topic to write about when the news was featured on TV. It was fate. I just had to write it.