The Senate's official website has also been hit by an online attack, administrators of the site said on Wednesday, Oct. 6.
The report was released a few hours after Senator Richard Gordon's office confirmed that the lawmaker's official website also fell victim last October 4.
An official from the Senate's Public Information and Relations Bureau (PRIB) reported that the Electronic Data Processing-Management Information System (EDP-MIS) Bureau was forced to temporarily block access to the Senate website because of an ongoing distributed denial-of-service (DDoS) attack.
According to the bureau, a DDoS attack is an attempt to make an online service or website unavailable by overwhelming it with Internet traffic from multiple sources.
Most of the traffic, the EDP-MIS said, came from different countries, but most of them used fake or "spoofed IP addresses."
The online attack comes at the heels of the Senate's ongoing investigation into the questionable billion worth COVID-19 pandemic supplies procurement deal between the Department of Budget and Management's Procurement Service (DBM-PS) and Pharmally Pharmaceutical Corp.
The ongoing Senate blue ribbon committee probe led by Gordon has triggered a verbal war between President Duterte and members of the Senate, notably against Gordon, senators Franklin Drilon, Panfilo Lacson, and other lawmakers critical of the administration's procurement deal with Pharmally, which allegedly involves the President's former economic adviser Michael Yang.
Duterte earlier defended Yang and executives of Pharmally and insisted that the procurement deal with the company is above-board.
He also recently issued an order barring Cabinet officials from attending the Senate blue ribbon panel's probe.