THE Department of Communications and Informations Technology said that the Philippine authorities are now conducting a coordination with their Chinese counterparts as to investigating and prosecuting who were behind the series of cyberattacks of government agencies and private institutions in the Philippines.
Earlier hackers believed to be operating from China, attacked but failed the OWWA website.
According to DICT Secretary Ivan John Uy said China had expressed willingness to help in the investigation of the cyber crimes.
"Yes, actually, they have reached out to ask if we can do some cooperation. Dahil it's actually both ways. Cooperation has to come, you know, as a mutual activity. So, they are willing to help, they have mentioned that if we can share with them, kung ano iyong nangyari, para mahanap daw nila kung saan at sino iyong gumawa noon," Uy said.
It will be recalled that on Saturday, the DICT had declared that the hackers "believed to be advanced threat groups that operate within the ambit of Chinese territories" breached into the email systems and internal websites of several government agencies that used a cloud service provider.
The DICT said they prevented an attack on the Overseas Workers Welfare Administration (OWWA) website.
They said that the IP address came from Chinese state-owned telco China Unicom.
During a senate investigation, they said that it, "including those directly involved in safeguarding national interests in the West Philippine Sea."
Earlier, the Chinese Embassy in Manila has dismissed the "groundless" allegations that China engaged in cyber attacks against the Philippines.
Beijing said they do not allow any party to engage in cyber attacks, the embassy said, "on Chinese soil or using Chinese infrastructure."
''Well, that’s not for us to come out with that conclusion yet ‘no. It’s too early. But anything is possible. So we just need to, I think, currently take it at face value and see how things develop,'' Uy said, adding that, "In cyber investigations and in analyzing all of this, we never rule out anything. Everything is in the realm of the possible, but we always maintain open arms. Anyone who wants to cooperate, you know, we don’t reject those offers and then see where we go from there."
