The ABS-CBN News’ website is the latest victim of a DDoS (Distributed Denial of Service) attack, which caused the news site to be inaccessible for a total of six hours on Saturday, December 11.

Back online Saturday evening, ABS-CBN said in a statement “its news website has been targeted by a rolling distributed denial of service (DDoS) attack since this morning, rendering portions of it inaccessible.”

DDoS attacks use networks of devices to flood a site with requests, with the purpose of overwhelming its servers and taking it offline.

Before ABS-CBN News, the websites of red-tagged rights groups and alternative media were the targets.

The cyberatacks against Altermidya and Bulatlat were traced to an IP (Internet Protocol) address assigned to the Philippine military. This was confirmed by the Philippine government itself, through a report by the Computer Emergency Response Team-Philippines, a unit under the Department of Information and Communications Technology.

Must Read

Military, DOST links found in DDoS attacks on media – report

In October, Senator Richard Gordon reported a DDoS attack on his personal website right in the middle of his committee’s investigation into pandemic procurement anomalies.

While its website was down, ABS-CBN News had to push its updates on its social media accounts.

“We are actively working to resolve the issue and restore our news website in its entirety. We appreciate your patience, understanding, and support,” ABS-CBN said in a statement Saturday.

ABS-CBN, the largest broadcast network in the country, is operating without a franchise after President Rodrigo Duterte’s allies at the House of Representatives denied the network its franchise renewal. It was the first time that ABS-CBN went off air since the Martial Law dictatorship.

Some ABS-CBN shows are able to continue airing on free TV via a partnership with Christian station A2Z, and on its cable channel ANC. – Rappler.com