Philippine police have arrested eight South Koreans who allegedly hacked into one of the country's biggest telecommunications companies to lower the cost of international cellphone calls for other Koreans in the Philippines.
Police Cyber Crime Division chief Gilbert Sosa said the hackers were rounded up Monday in four raids around metropolitan Manila along with seven Filipino women working for them.
Chinese and Filipino hackers "exchanged fire" in cyberspace over the weekend, adding to the two countries' recent tensions over disputes in the South China Sea.
GMA News Online reported that Filipino "hacktivists" struck back on Saturday at Chinese websites after hackers - "apparently from China" - defaced the official website of the University of the Philippines on Friday.
Three Taiwanese nationals and their Filipino cohort were arrested last week for allegedly running a call bypass fraud syndicate from their condo units in Makati City, Philippines.
The arrests were made by the National Bureau of Immigration on a complaint from Smart Communications Inc.
The Philippines is increasingly lagging far behind in online security to the detriment not only of the government and private firms, but also to individuals who increasingly use technology in their daily lives, a senior lawmaker has said.
“We are being overtaken by increasingly digital paradigms in information and communications,” Senator Edgardo Angara, who had been advocating increased security in the use of Internet reiterated. “A large chunk of human activity nowadays is no longer merely physical--it occurs in the internet,” he added.
WEAK LAW enforcement has made the country a “safe haven” for transnational cybercrime syndicates, a ranking police official said yesterday.
