For a few minutes Thursday, a government website posed a potential threat to visitors after one of its links directed them to a webpage that triggered an antivirus alert.
The Department of Foreign Affairs (DFA), which had taken down its website since late Wednesday for "maintenance," took down its homepage as of Thursday afternoon.
Visitors to the DFA website before it was taken down at 1:39 p.m. would be directed to a specific webpage of the Global Forum on Migration and Development if they clicked on the "More" button under the DFA site homepage's banner photo:
However, clicking on the link in question would trigger a warning from an antivirus program:
The domain of the "infected" webpage belongs to the Global Forum on Migration and Development:
On the other hand, other sections of the DFA website before it went offline again appeared to be incomplete, including the Press Releases section:
The DFA website was taken offline at 1:39 p.m. As of 4 p.m., the site was still offline but a message apologizing to visitors for the inconvenience as it was down for maintenance. It offered links to passport appointments.
It was latest in a series of incidents that showed the vulnerabilities of government websites, five of which had been hacked into and defaced since December.
The defaced government websites included those of the Departments of Labor, Health and Social Welfare; Technical Education and Skills Development Authority; and National Disaster Coordinating Council.
Earlier this week, unidentified hackers broke into the website of retailer CD-r King and defaced some of its pages. - TJD, GMANews.TV
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