Ibon Foundation claims attack on website

MANILA, Philippines (UPDATED) – The website of Ibon Foundation – Ibon.org – was taken down in an apparent cyberattack, the think tank’s executive director said early Friday morning, April 19.

Sonny Africa, the executive director, said on Twitter, “No, IBON’s website isn’t on vacation… and apparently neither are cyber-attackers.” 

No, IBON’s website isn’t on vacation…

… and apparently neither are cyber-attackers!

Working on resurrection 🙂 pic.twitter.com/yksAA3PDgP

— Sonny Africa (@sonnyafrica) April 18, 2019

Visiting Ibon.org currently gives what appears to be a 403 error, meaning access by a given visitor is forbidden to the site. 

Africa said the foundation is working to bring the site back online.

Speaking with Rappler over Twitter, Africa added the issue was with “bots making abnormally large requests.”

He added, “We were able to get the site up again after a few hours last time, but now maybe 3 days to rise again.”

In text messages to Rappler, the Ibon Foundation also said it “experienced the same irregular activity as last February 27.” The effect of the Friday attack forced the webhost to disable operations so as not to affect other clients.

The downtime for Ibon Foundation’s website follows attacks on alternative media websites in the Philippines, specifically those under the Altermidya banner. 

The Philippine government also tagged Ibon Foundation as part of a number of groups whose funding was allegedly being used to support terrorism by the Communist Party of the Philippines-New People’s Army (CPP-NPA). – Rappler.com