Hackers make good on threat to cripple govt websites

As many as 51 sites could have been hacked in retaliation against a government decision to block file-sharing sites.

UPDATED

PETALING JAYA: At least 41 Malaysian government websites were hacked into overnight but no personal or financial data were compromised, government officials said on Thursday, as the Southeast nation becomes the latest target of a cyber-war waged by the activists.

In the attacks, 51 websites were hit and at least 41 of these sites were disrupted, industry regulator Malaysian Communications and Multimedia Commission (MCMC) said.

“Our monitoring of the situation showed that there was a reduced level of attacks by 4am this morning and upon further evaluation, so far, we gauge that there has been little impact on Malaysian users as a result,” the communications commission said in a statement.
MCMC also said that most of the affected websites have recovered.

Malaysian police chief Ismail Omar meanwhile told Reuters no personal or financial data had so far been stolen but the authorities were trying to determine the extent of the attacks.

Top of the hacked list was www.malaysia.gov.my. The attacks were launched last night, one day ahead of their threat to carry out the cyber onslaught.

The other sites hacked into belonged to the Information Ministry (kpkk.gov.my), the Fire and Emergency Services Department (bomba.gov.my), the Land Public Transport Commission (spad.gov.my), and Parliament (www.parlimen.gov.my).

Other related agencies sites which are down are Sabah Tourism (www.sabahtourism.com) and Construction Industry Development Board (www.cidb.gov.my).

It also included Asean Connect, Treasury, Jobs Malaysia, and National Sports Council among others. All the sites, except CIDB, are completely inaccessible.

These sites are allegedly experiencing DDoS (Distributed Denial-of-Service) attacks or switched off by website administrator.

Anonymous’ attacks come as a reaction to Malaysian Communication and Multimedia Commission’s decision to block 10 file sharing sites last week.

Anonymous sent a hack threat note on June 14 with details on the times of the web attacks.

Information Communications and Culture Minister Rais Yatim told the media the following day that the government was prepared to face the cyber attacks.

He also said the hackers ‘had got the wrong end of the stick’.

“They have misunderstood the government’s good intentions. There is no cyber censorship in Malaysia unless crimes have been committed,” Rais was quoted as saying.

Sabah Tourism Board warned

Meanwhile, in KOTA KINABALU, the hackers had listed 392 accounts taken from the Sabah Tourism Board website.

They posted this on a website http://pastehtml.com/view/ax3mejiup.html#more, where the group revealed that they had access to 3,456 more accounts.

The list included the details of those with access such as emails, passwords, usernames, first names and last names of those who were stored in the database.

The group had indicated that they had not done any harm to the database.

But they did issue Sabah Tourism Board a warning which read “PEACE NO HARM WAS DONE. To sabahtourism.com Please fix the exploit.”

The posting continues to state: “We are anonymous, We are Legion, We do not forgive, We do not forget. Expect us. WE LOVE MALAYSIA”.

Meanwhile FMT contacted one of those whose details were revealed on the website but she said that it was an old email from a previous place of employment.

She said that she had not receive any suspicious emails following the attack and had not used that email address for five years.