Comelec exec: Site slowing down due to visitor traffic, no trace of cyber attack

Comelec spokesman James Jimenez on Saturday said the poll body's website has been slowing down due to heavy visitor traffic, even as he said there was no indication it was compromised by Distributed Denial of Service (DDoS) attack that affected some government sites.

"I've been informed by our IT department the website is slowing down due to the volume of traffic it is currently receiving," he said in a post on his Twitter account.

Some visitors to the Comelec site (www.comelec.gov.ph) were able to access it, though there were instances it failed to load.

Earlier, Jimenez told GMA News Online the Comelec site was sporadically experiencing some downtime because of visitor traffic.

"Too many people trying to access (the site), slows everyone down," he said.

"No evidence yet of DDoS," he said in reply to a question from a Twitter user who cited a report that several sites, including those of the government, were affected by such an attack.

Earlier, it was reported that GMA Network's technical security team detected an overnight cyber attack that is reportedly still ongoing and that targets sites such as GMA News Online, ABS-CBN News, Philippine Airlines, Globe, Smart, and more than two dozen Philippine government websites.

The attacks are apparently emanating from Taiwan based on the referrer tags and the forum website pages used to "trigger" the attacks.

These attacks happened after an incident on Thursday involving Taiwanese fishermen and the Philippine Coast Guard.

A Taiwanese fisherman was killed when Coast Guard personnel fired shots at the fishing boat, which allegedly threatened to ram the Philippine authorities' ship.

The Palace has yet to comment as of posting time on the alleged cyber attack and its relation to the incident involving the Taiwanese fisherman. — Gian C. Geronimo /LBG, GMA News