AN official from the Department of Information and Communications Technology (DICT) said that they were able to prevent a cyber attack aimed at taking down the website of the Overseas Workers Welfare Administration (OWWA).

DICT Undersecretary for Cybersecurity Jeff Ian Dy narrated that they were able to “defend” various web applications related to OWWA from cyber attacks.

“There was an attack to take down OWWA [website]… but it did not materialize because we were able to counterattack it,” Dy said.

Meanwhile, the DICT officials said they were able to trace the command and control center of the cyber attackers to be operating "from within China."

"So we're able to detect that the attackers’ IP address came from China Unicom. So we need to coordinate with them," Dy said.

China Unicom or China United Network Communications Group is a Chinese state-owned telecommunications company.

However, Dy said that the Chinese government may not be directly involved in the cyberattack.

“What we can say is that the threat actors were operating from within Chinese territory,” he said.

It will be recalled that there are websites of government agencies that were attacked such as the Philippine Health Insurance Corp. (PhilHealth) which was struck by ransomware that resulted in the leak of their data.