MORE THAN 100 links posing as official UST webpages have been found redirecting users to “e-sabong,” online casinos, and other digital gambling and betting platforms, based on a Varsitarian investigation.
The compromised sites use UST’s official domain, ust.edu.ph, and display the University’s seal as the site icon and list “University of Santo Tomas” as the website title.
Affected subpages include those under the Office for Admissions and the Faculty of Medicine and Surgery.
The fake links appear in Google search results under titles such as “legal online betting sites,” “best betting site to join,” “online sabong,” and “online gambling real money no deposit,” among others.
Clicking these links redirected users to betting platforms like AAJILI, an online casino and gambling site.
Philippe Hernandez, director of the UST Communications Bureau, which manages the University’s website and social meda pages, said officials were aware of the issue and were working to resolve it.
“We’ve been alerted on this and are working with OICT (Office of Information and Communications Technology) to address the Google Search issue,” Hernandez told the Varsitarian.
Some of the compromised UST webpages have since become inaccessible.
Online gambling and betting sites posing as UST’s official website first made a blip on the Varsitarian’s radar in May when the Philippine Collegian reported a similar attack targeting more than 1,300 webpages of the University of the Philippines (UP).
UP websites affected by the attack, referred to by the Philippine Collegian as “linkjacking,” included learning management systems and administrative webpages.
This marks the second cyberattack targeting UST and other Philippine schools this year.
In January, several websites under the “.edu.ph” domain experienced an hours-long outage due to a denial-of-service attack, which overloads websites and degrades their performance.
READ: UST site goes down as edu.ph domain suffers attack
Affected institutions then included UP, Colegio de San Juan de Letran, UST Angelicum College, De La Salle University, and the Polytechnic University of the Philippines, among others.
