MANILA, Philippines (UPDATED) – A number of Philippine government websites appear to have been defaced by hackers connecting themselves to hacktivist group Anonymous.

A group called Anonymous Taiwan, which seems to use the newly-made @anon_taiwan Twitter handle, inserted new pages into the Department of Science and Technology (DOST) and Gov.ph websites.

The message shown on both sites states, “We are Anonymous. Philippine Coastguard killed Taiwanese Unarmed fishermen (sic) is injustice (sic) and unforgivable. Philippine government protecting murders is unacceptable. You must apologize. Killers must be arrested immediately. Otherwise, we will not stop.”

A separate Pastebin post, spotted by Interaksyon.com, notes that the hackers also released information they gained, such as database entries from government websites, and the passwords and login information of the Philippine Public Safety College and the provincial government of Sulu, among others.

According to a report from The China Post in the early hours of May 13, the government website hackings appear to have been the next salvo in a cyber war, which The China Post says paralyzed “the websites of both countries’ presidents, as well as those of Taiwan’s Ministry of National Defense (MND), Ministry of Economic Affairs and Coast Guard Administration (CGA).”

The defacements follow an acknowledgment by the DOST that distributed denial of service attacks (DDoS) occurred during the weekend. A number of government sites continue to fluctuate between uptime and downtime.

The tensions between Taiwan and the Philippines developed as a result of the shooting of Hung Shih-cheng, a Taiwanese fisherman.

Taiwan has given the Philippines a 72-hour ultimatum to respond to a number of requests, including an investigation into the shooting incident, a public apology and restitution to the family of the deceased, and the opening of fishery agreement talks. – Rappler.com