A featured news on Yahoo! called my attention - Hackers attack Philippine Vice President Site posted just recently by AFP News. I am not usually interested with matters concerning politics and the people in the government, but this 'hacking' thing caught me. Whoa, what a new year blast to the Philippine government cyberworld, the online portals of some small government agencies were defaced by this so-called PrivateX group.
Reports on hacking is not a very surprising thing. There are lots of intrusion here and there. What's overwhelming is that, these sites that are affected are online portals and/or web sites of Philippine government agencies..whether small or big, these agencies provide services to the people in the local and abroad. Modifying the interface (I have not actually learned what exactly the hackers have done to it), posting unmatched contents or anything that would cause disorder in the website contents surely disturbs the viewers. Worst thing would be disconnection to the source of very important details or information.
I have spent a little time viewing and inspecting government agencies' websites when I was still in the university. Of course, part of the objective was to check for user-friendliness and interactive contents, and look for a good basis for comparison in website projects. At that earlier time, we already noticed the effortless designs of the sites. Most are simple and not so complicated. This is quite understandable especially that most of the Philippine government sites just serve as communication centers. Most contents are static pages featuring the profiles and projects. There are some pages allotted for customer or client support like help lines where to address the concerns and grievances. This is what most sites are serving.
The fact that these websites are defaced posed one major warning - and that is what the PrivateX group has emphasized in their attack. The incident attested how the country's government agencies' sites are weak in terms of cyber security. The report hopefully has called immediate attention towards the concerned organizations. I just hope that future online portals should be dynamically not just appealing but interactive, should cater to a wide extent of services that can be put online, and at least, tolerant to attacks - not just created just for the sake of having a website, but should truly address its purpose, and should withstand tests of vulnerability. I guess every website creator should be alert on this.
The incident reported on the hackers' attack has both advantage and disadvantage. It was bad because we were attacked and our sites are affected but it also let us know that we have to improve our defense. It may be unethical to us but at least we know which things to target for betterment - cyber vulnerabilities and misconfigurations.
Disclaimer: I don't own the image(s) posted herein. Credits to Google.
No comments:
Post a Comment