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‘WHITE HAT’ HACKERS WELCOME TO PARTNER WITH DICT TO EXPOSE GOVT VULNERABILITIES By Lorenz S. Marasigan
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HE Department of Information and Communications Technology (DICT) is open to partnering with “white hat” hackers to expose government vulnerabilities and reduce attacks to public systems.
DICT Spokesman Renato Paraiso Jr.
ily information. Additionally, financial transaction records such as names, transaction numbers, dates, pay slips, firearm registration status, and emails were leaked. The database contains 1,562,463 entries in the transactions table, affecting approximately 590,000 individuals. The breach even had data entries related to high-profile political figures, including President Marcos and Vice President Sara Duterte. Paraiso noted that the National Police’s cybersecurity system is not “off-the-rack.” “The system of the PNP is not to be messed with, but even the most sophisticated system has vulnerabilities,” he said. “With technology ever evolving, what you procure now may be obsolete in six months—so we have to practice cyber hygiene like constant testing.” Paraiso likened this to purchasing shoes. “It has wear and tear,” he said. He noted that the attack is not
COFFEEMILL | DREAMSTIME.COM
However, the agency admonished the “hacktivists” against dumping data on the internet. “We are open to partnering with these individuals. But if your way of activism is dumping these data on the web, personally, I would doubt your intentions. If you are true to your intentions, then contact us directly,” DICT Spokesman Renato Paraiso Jr. said. In an interview late Wednesday, Paraiso said the recent infiltration of the National Police’s Firearms and Explosives Office licensing systems was claimed by hacktivist “ph1ns.” However, the ICT department is “not ruling out other possibilities as well.” “We have to validate the claim,” Paraiso said. As of press time, the DICT is still assessing the impact of the hack; however, reports have shown that the hacker has said to have exploited the vulnerabilities of the FEO, gaining access to 1.5 terabytes of sensitive data. “It was a shotgun approach. They tried to penetrate several systems and when they got a vulnerability, they targeted it for one to two months before they were able to access it,” Paraiso said. The compromised data includes detailed personal information of hundreds of thousands of individuals—names, addresses, dates and places of birth, occupations, educational backgrounds, medical records, religion, and fam-
consistent with that of ransomware. “It’s an exfiltration of data from that particular system. We don’t have any reason to believe that it was ransomware,” Paraiso said. The hacker, “ph1ns,” claims in their X profile that they are the “DICT’s best friend.”
Mail Transfer Protocol] servers using a mail client and bypass 2FA this way,” the hacker said. It appears that “ph1ns” is a hacktivist who exposes government vulnerabilities for correction. Paraiso said the DICT is open to working with the likes of “ph1ns.” The caveat, however, is
Just on Thursday, the hacker called on the National Police, citing another vulnerability. “Dear PNP, your implementation of 2FA [two-factor authentication] for e-mails doesn’t work well. It is still possible to connect directly to the IMAP [Internet Message Access Protocol] and SMTP [Simple
for them not to expose these vulnerabilities to the public. The government has been seeing a slew of digital attacks over the past few months. These include hacks on the systems of the Philippine Health Insurance Corp., the Congress, the Senate, and the Department of Education, among others.
Seven-hour talks in Geneva hotel highlight US-China struggle on AI By Michelle Jamrisko & Augusta Saraiva | Bloomberg
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Their meeting marked the first government discussions on AI between the US and China, with roughly nine officials from each side stressing a shared desire to prevent nightmare scenarios like a computer-triggered nuclear war. One ironic deviation from the script: The coffee machine at the venue broke as they discussed far more advanced technology. While the Geneva talks yielded no concrete agreements, the conversations were cordial and set the stage for continued engagement on safety and risks related to AI,
according to two Biden administration officials, who spoke on condition of anonymity to discuss diplomatic matters. For now, there’s no follow-up meeting scheduled, they said. Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesman Wang Wenbin said after the meeting that China was “willing to strengthen exchanges and cooperation with the United States in the field of artificial intelligence, explore the use of artificial intelligence to empower sustainable development, and communicate on the next issue in
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OR seven hours at a Geneva hotel earlier this month, top US and Chinese officials locked into talks on collectively managing their biggest fears around artificial intelligence—while keeping up a cutthroat competition to dominate technology that promises to reshape the global economy.
risk response.” Even as the two sides seek to cooperate on artificial intelligence, the technology is also emerging as a new arena of rivalry for the world’s two largest economies—already at odds over Taiwan, wars in Ukraine and Gaza, and US-led export restrictions on semiconductor technology. Conversations on AI are also playing out at the United Nations and in so-called “track two” group-
ings of private-sector participants from the US and China, with all of this activity endorsed from the very top. The bilateral dialogue was one of the highlighted US achievements out of the last in-person meeting between President Joe Biden and Chinese President Xi Jinping in California in November. Washington and Beijing are now jockeying to write the rules for AI governance, with each side portraying the other as a destabi-
lizing force as they court the Global South. In March, the US rallied support for a UN resolution aimed at promoting “safe, secure and trustworthy” AI systems worldwide, a months-long effort backed by more than 110 countries as cosponsors, including China. Beijing is now crafting its own proposal, intended to close gaps between rich and developing nations. Though the US and Chinese efforts at the UN are non-binding and would do little to advance comprehensive regulation, they represent broader efforts to lead the global AI conversation. Biden initially highlighted the need to bring AI discussions to the UN and other multilateral forums when he spoke before the General Assembly in New York in September, while Chinese Foreign Minister Wang Yi announced his country’s push in March. In Geneva, Biden administration officials raised concerns that China is misusing AI, including in ways that risk encroaching on human rights, while the Chinese delegation recited worries on export controls and outbound investment. The talks took place
the same day that the US announced a new swath of tariffs on a range of Chinese imports, including quadrupling the tariff rate for electric vehicles. “The fact that Beijing still participated in the talks when the US had thoroughly telegraphed the tariff hike, to me, underscores China has its own concerns about the potential applications of AI,” said Jennifer Welch, chief geoeconomics analyst at Bloomberg Economics. The US delegation made an extensive presentation of valuation measurements, transparency, and monitoring led by Elizabeth Kelly, director of the US Artificial Intelligence Safety Institute, the Biden administration officials said. One goal from the US side was to better understand how Chinese officials are planning AI regulations and gauging potential high-impact risks as well as day-to-day issues such as health care. On the other side of the table was Yang Tao, the Chinese foreign ministry’s director-general of North American and Oceanian Affairs. His presence highlighted the Continued on A2
PESO EXCHANGE RATES Q US 58.2150 Q JAPAN 0.3709 Q UK 73.9331 Q HK 7.4554 Q CHINA 8.0383 Q SINGAPORE 43.0775 Q AUSTRALIA 38.4510 Q EU 62.9712 Q KOREA 0.0426 Q SAUDI ARABIA 15.5227 Source: BSP (May 24, 2024)