Philippines: Cyber attack downs NUJP site twice
Event- Country
- Philippines
- Initial Date
- Feb 8, 2019
- Event Description
The National Union of Journalists of the Philippines (NUJP) website was briefly inaccessible twice on 8 February 2019 in a distributed denial of service (DDoS) attack, the group said in a statement. "According to our digital security partners, the two attacks happened at around 6 a.m. and 6 p.m., with attackers sending up to 426 gigabytes of traffic to our website, almost 10 times the 50 gb/s that brought down alternative news site Bulatlat," NUJP said. The site was back up at 8:30 p.m. This is not the first time NUJP's website was attacked. On 9 January 2017, the group reported that its website was attacked by a "massive denial of service." NUJP was also subjected to red tagging on 7 January 2019 by several local tabloids, which ran a similar headline, "NUJP pinamumunuan ng CPP-NPA-NDF" (NUJP Headed by CPP-NPA-NDF). One "Ka Ernesto', identified in the reports as a former member of NUJP, said the group had links with the Communist Party of the Philippines founder Jose Maria Sison. "We believe the attack on NUJP site is related to the ones launched against Bulatlat and alternative news sites Kodao Productions and AlterMidya, all of which host NUJP chapters." Bulatlat (translated as the act of uncovering or exposing something) reported receiving continuous DoS attacks, which brought down its website for several days, from 19 to 29 January 2019. Alternative news websites - including Bulatlat, Pinoy Weekly, and Kodao Productions - were the targets of cyber attacks in December 2018.
- Impact of Event
- 1
- Gender of HRD
- Other (e.g. undefined, organisation, community)
- Violation
- Online Attack and Harassment
- Surveillance
- Rights Concerned
- Internet freedom
- Online
- HRD
- NGO
- Perpetrator-State
- Unknown
- Perpetrator-Non-State
- Unknown
- Source
- Monitoring Status
- Pending
- Event Location
Latitude: 12.8797
Longitude: 121.774
- Event Location
- Summary for Publications
On 8 February 2019, the National Union of Journalists of the Philippines (NUJP), an organisation promoting freedom of expression and freedom of press, had their website subject to cyber attack