MANILA -- The Department of Information and Communications Technology on Tuesday denied claims hackers successfully breached the websites of several government websites. 

This, following a report that Chinese-state sponsored hackers breached several government websites hacked into the websites of agencies from the Executive Department and obtained sensitive military data related to the West Philippine Sea.

In a Palace briefing, DICT Secretary Ivan John Uy said that no current data has been compromised despite continuous attempts by various groups to attack government websites.

DICT confirms 'persistent' cyberattacks targeting offices under executive branch 

“I’d like to reiterate that so far what we have seen is that no current information has been compromised. What we have seen so far are old data from many years ago that are being regurgitated, recycled just to make an impression that they were successful in doing so,” DICT Secretary Ivan Uy said in a Palace briefing. 

The official explained said that some groups are reposting old data to make it appear that their hacking attempts have been successful.

“Marami ang nagki-claim na, 'Oh, may na-hack namin itong ahensiya ng gobyerno,' and then we pose the challenge to them, 'Okay, na-hack ninyo at mayroon kayong nakuha –- pakita ninyo.' So, we challenge them, 'Okay post it, what did you get?' And either they do not post anything because they did not get anything, they just claim to have done so; or if they post, we see that these are dated/old data. So, that’s how we’re helping all the different sectors,” he said. 

Meanwhile, Uy said that the DICT has monitored a significant increase in probing and attacks especially ahead of the Midterm elections in May. 

“What’s happening is that there are more fake information or disinformation that are being perpetrated on social media. There are attempts at compromising certain infrastructure like websites, they are trying to deface some websites or trying to introduce malicious software in all of these sites,” he said. “We are repelling several hundred thousand attempts on a daily basis, and this cuts across not just the executive branch but it includes also for instance, the legislative branch ‘no, sometimes itong mga websites ng mga kandidato sa congress or sa senate ay medyo binabanatan din.”