PCIJ blog hacked

At 4:16 p.m. Monday, the PCIJ blog (www.pcij.org/blog/) was penetrated by a hacker who managed to post a long letter titled "A Hacker's Journey." The PCIJ blog, hosted by a United States-based firm, had only been accessible to seven writers of the PCIJ.

Police to look into PCIJ blog hacking

According to a posting by Alecks Pabico (http://www.pcij.org/blog/?p=154), one of PCIJ’s regular blog contributors, the timing of the attack was uncanny as it came on the day when President Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo finally broke her silence on the issue of the taped conversations.

“The attack, however, came as no surprise to us, having been made aware by some of our sources that certain quarters since last week have been trying to get the services of hackers to take our blog down. We can only surmise why. Since the controversy surrounding the supposed taped conversations between Pres. Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo and Comelec Commissioner Virgilio Garcillano broke out in the news, our blog has been providing access to the audio files and transcripts of the tape versions to an information-hungry public,” Pabico added.

The hacker known as “Rebz” made an unauthorized entry in the PCIJ blog and left his name as a sign of the security breach, Pabico said.

Rebz, who is also known as Rebarz99, is a notorious hacker that has been attacking websites all over the world, including the SMS portals of local mobile content providers, Sosa said.

Sosa said that the police have a dossier on the Filipino hacker but have not arrested or filed a case against him for lack of complainants.