A group of hackers have messed up VP Binay's website recently.

Some thoughts on this:

- It looks like the hackers are 'white-hat' = tech jargon to mean that they are 'ethical hackers' or hackers whose purpose it is to expose security flaws rather than take advantage of them.

- I can't tell what CMS the hacked site uses. It's PHP, but most of my (elementary) tricks for figuring out what CMS it uses have resulted in diddly. There used to be a site that helps people figure out what CMS a domain uses but I can't find it anymore. I'm pretty sure its still using some form of CMS. Lacking that information however, it's impossible to guess how it was hacked. It could have been as easy as guessing the password or as sophisticated as a mysql injection, or might even be a hack on the web host itsef.

Hacking these websites and the others mentioned in the article is a fairly irrelevant exercise, imho for 2 reasons:

Why it's irrelevant reason number 1 = Message is blurred.

The guys who defaced this site left amongst other things, this message:

Occupants of the west are still on the move and in no such time, Manila, will be the center of unethical activities in Asia. For some reasons that is untold, they choose the Philippines to organize a legion that will nullify the entire Philippine Cyberspace...

Far from instilling fear or whatever it is they want to effect, they've only succeeded in coming across as idiots. If they had any good intentions at all, it's lost in their attempt at sounding profound.

Why it's irrelevant reason number 2. VP Binay's site is mostly PR.

VP Binay's website is essentially his online public relations vehicle, and as such is irrelevant in itself. You can therefore make the argument that this activity is a DOUBLE irrelevant, if that's at all possible.

How These Hackers CAN Become Relevant

First of all, they shouldn't focus on the small fry. Go for a bank or some mission critical website and show they're using bad security if they are. That'll really stir things up.

Second, if you really want to bring attention to security, praise is just as effective as a defacement. If these hackers find a site that manages to hold up against their attacks, they should take the time to tell everyone about these as well, so that these can serve as good examples.

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