Converge Thwarts 183 Billion Attempts to Access Banned Websites in 2024

MANILA – Converge, a local broadband service provider, successfully blocked approximately 183 billion attempts to access prohibited websites in 2024, a significant increase from the 10-12 billion attempts recorded between 2021 and 2023. Andrew Malijan, the company’s chief information security officer, revealed that these attempts targeted 683,000 URLs or domains that Converge had blocked. Last year, the company added 150,000 new URLs to its system, identified as illegal or unauthorized, which saw a dramatic increase in traffic leading to the surge in blocked attempts. These URLs were categorized into various types of illegal content, including child sexual abuse materials (CSAM), online abuse or exploitation of children (OSAEC), phishing and banking fraud, online gambling, and voyeurism. Malijan noted that CSAM and OSAEC accounted for nearly 98% of the blocked attempts, with online gambling following closely. He attributed the sharp rise in attempts to access these sites to the use of artificial intelligence (AI) by hackers and malicious entities, suggesting that these efforts are no longer manual but AI-driven. In response, Converge plans to enhance its defenses by employing AI to detect and block more malicious sites, setting the stage for an AI versus AI battle to safeguard its network.