PrivateX hacker group defaces Office of Vice President site again

Hackers struck twice on New Year's Day, defacing another government website on Sunday evening and calling anew for "information security" but this time, also appearing to taunt its target.   The PrivateX group defaced the Office of the Vice President site before 9 p.m. Sunday, hours after hitting that of the Philippine Nuclear Research Institute.   In Sunday evening's hack, the hackers embedded a video clip of a news item quoting Vice President Jejomar Binay's spokesman Joey Salgado as denying the OVP site had been hacked sometime last year.   At the time, Salgado was downplaying a hack of the OVP website, saying the OVP was merely transferring to a new host.   "Months had passed when we first wired our sentiments and growing passion of concern to intensify the Information Security here in the Philippines. 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," the group said Sunday night in the message on the defaced OVP website. As in the defacing of the PNRI website, PrivateX "assured" that "nothing was lost during the process of this defacement."   Cue from Philkers?   Sunday evening's hack appeared to be more elaborate than the defacement of the PNRI site earlier in the day.   While the PNRI hack redirected visitors to a page containing its message, the hack on the OVP involved changing the text on the title bar to "Pr1vX" and placing the text of its message directly on the OVP website.   The OVP website attacked by PrivateX last July, with the group asking at the time that it not be associated with the hacktivist groups Philkers and Anonymous. — ELR, GMA News