MANILA, Philippines - An Internet marketing specialist on Tuesday said the recent defacement of several government websites reflects badly on the Philippines, which is already receiving negative publicity over the August 23 hostage tragedy that left 8 Hong Kong tourists dead.

In an interview, popular blogger Carlo Ople said the hacking of the websites of the Philippine Information Agency (www.pia.gov.ph), Philippine National Police (www.pnp.gov.ph), Bulacan provincial government (www.bulacan.gov.ph) and Hagonoy town (www.hagonoybulacan.gov.ph) is embarrassing for the Philippine government especially after last week's hostage tragedy.

"It's more of a PR thing especially now that the temperature is a bit high.  The government should really look at all angles that would cause damage to their reputation and obviously Web security and websites going down and all of those messages coming up is part of that," Ople said in an interview on ANC's "Headstart."

He said the hacking incidents did not affect government services since all 4 sites are essentially "brochure" sites.  He said the hacking incidents only underline the lack of security of government websites.

"Its just making a statement because there’s no real interaction or database-building happening between the government website and the general populace unless its a service that's really important like registering a business on the SEC website," he said.

Last Thursday, the PNP website was shut down for several hours due to attacks from alleged "hacktivists." A day later, the official website of the Bulacan provincial government was hacked by a group claiming to be from China and Malaysia.

In a page inserted in the Bulacan website, the hackers demanded an apology from the Philippines for the August 23 hostage crisis.

The PIA website was also defaced over the weekend: its homepage replaced with an all-black page and the words "Hacked by 7z1" and signature "Black Matrix Team | 0x.oday@Gmail.com". The PIA website was eventually restored Sunday evening.

On Monday, the homepage of the Hagonoy website was replaced with a new page that showed the Chinese flag and Chinese characters that said: "Do not underestimate our pain ... Hackers from China by custom group F.M.T.”

The defaced page also opens with a dialog box saying, "You make me angry."

Government officials have yet to confirm if the hackers who defaced the websites of government agencies were from Hong Kong and China. Presidential spokesman Edwin Lacierda said it was also possible that the hacking may have been done by hackers from the Philippines.

Tighten Web security

Presidential Communications and Operations Office Secretary Herminio Coloma said Malacañang has alerted all government agencies to review and improve security of their websites. "We are adopting best practices to lessen the vulnerability of our websites to hacking and other cyber crimes," he said.

Ople said countries like the United States and South Korea have designated government agencies that handle Web security "because they have several experiences already of their websites being victims of hacking or several attacks bringing the site down."

In the case of the PNP site going down, Ople said the incident could have been a "denial of service" attack. He said hackers come up with a program that will make a lot of computers log on to one site, causing it to crash because of lack of bandwidth.

Ople said hackers can compromise a website by exploiting various weaknesses such as outdated scripts, third-party plug-ins or outdated software on the site.

He said the Philippine government should tap reputable hosting companies to secure high-profile government websites.

“I think for the benefit of the Philippines to secure high-profile websites, they should make it a habit to secure by having it hosted... if outside the Philippines, it’s fine as long as you have the proper security protocols,” he said.

He said local IT professionals could also help in making government websites more secure.

"We have a lot of really good IT people here. Most of the top talents are Filipinos. It really boils down to giving people in the private industries ...an attractive package to join government or outsourcing the proper services in the proper companies," he said.  Leilani Chavez, abs-cbnNEWS.com