Cyber hacking diverts money to hacker's account

The Department of Trade and Industry Region 10 is warning entrepreneurs of the ongoing and increasing cases of cyber hacking especially on the import and export transactions of Filipino importers and Chinese suppliers.

Linda O. Boniao, officer-in-charge of Department of Trade and Industry Region 10 said that these cases of cyber hacking usually divert Filipino importers’ payments to the hacker’s bank account.

Further, she said, the Embassy’s economic team in Beijing has already met with the officials of China’s Ministry of Public Security (MPS) Criminal Investigation Department (ICD) particularly their cyber crime investigation officers to discuss on these reported cases. So far, there have been six cases reported to the Philippine Embassy in China by Filipino victims, Boniao revealed.

According to the report, there are three variations of these instances. One involves a Filipino importer and a Chinese supplier with the former’s final transaction payment diverted to the hacker’s account in China. The second involves a Filipino importer and a Chinese supplier, with the former’s payment diverted to the hacker’s account outside China. And the third type involves a Filipino importer and a non-Chinese supplier, with the former’s payment ending up in the hacker’s bank account in China.

Through investigation, Chinese officials have been able to trace the perpetrators to Africans, specifically, Nigerians, said Boniao.

Chinese findings are further confirmed by the National Bureau of Investigation here, she added. In a similar set-up between Filipino importer and Chinese supplier, they were able to trace the deceptive email directing the Filipino importer to deposit the payment in the hacker’s account, to Nigeria.

Boniao explained that MPS authorities can easily freeze bank accounts in China, if they are subject to criminal complaint. However, this is not easy in other countries as it will require court order. She added that Chinese officials cannot assist if hacker’s bank account is outside China for lack of jurisdiction.

In the end, Boniao said that the most effective means of preventing cyber hacking menace is for entrepreneurs to be vigilant about the occurrence of such crime. (JMOR-PIA10)

source: PIA

PRC (Professional Regulation Commission) Website DEFACED

Yesterday about 10:00 pm, the website of Professional Regulation Commission (PRC) was defaced showing a message from the hackers: "Hacked by linuXploit_crew =) by DeRf-, Hualdo and _serial_killer_," As of this time the PRC's website is still inaccessible.

A website defacement is an attack on a website that changes the visual appearance of the site. These are typically the work of system crackers, who break into a web server and replace the hosted website with one of their own.

A message is often left on the webpage stating his or her pseudonym and the output from "uname -a" and the "id" command along with "shout outs" to his or her friends. Sometimes the Defacer makes fun of the system administrator for failing to maintain server security. Most times the defacement is harmless, however, it can sometimes be used as a distraction to cover up more sinister actions such as uploading malware.

A high-profile website defacement was carried out on the website of the company SCO Group following its assertion that Linux contained stolen code. The title of the page was changed from "Red Hat vs SCO" to "SCO vs World," with various satirical content following.

Maybe this is in response by the hackers to the government's statement that they are tightening the IT security among its servers. Following the report that hackers from ghost network where able to breach into some of the computers of Department of Foreign Affairs (DFA).

What is this incident telling us? We need to tightened our IT vulnerabilities and the government needs to be serious about this. To my knowledge this is the third site of the Philippine government that was defaced and "security holes" may still be left opened in other web sites.

Moreover, this incident makes me ask: how secure is the COMELEC's computers to be used in automating the polls? If hackers where able to breach into the gov system, we just hope that the COMELEC's computers is secure enough to for us to have clean 2010 election.