One more news portal has fallen victim to cyber attack just before the Sarawak state election.
PETALING JAYA: The Harakahdaily website has become the latest victim of cyber attack.Websites critical of Sarawak Chief Minister Taib Mahmud such as Sarawak Report and news portal Malaysiakini were also attacked and were forced to take alternative measures.
The website, which is PAS’ mouthpiece, had come under a DDoS (Distributed Denial of Service) attack since 10pm yesterday and Harakahdaily technicians are still working to ensure that the site is running.
A quick check revealed that the Harakahdaily’s server is functional. However, the address was diverted to an alternative address, bm.harakahdaily.com.
The news portal’s editor, Zulkifli Sulong, when contacted by FMT, clarified that the attack was made against the domain name and not the server.
“We had just moved our server. We learnt from what happened to Malaysiakini and we separated the domain from the server. So, they couldn’t attack our server,” he said.
He said that anyone who searched for “harakahdaily” would be re-routed to the alternative site.
Zulkifli added that the attacks have yet to cease and the Harakahdaily technicians were monitoring the situation around the clock.
Sarawak Report’s server is currently functional but Malaysiakini is still working on restoring its server while a stripped version of the site still provides the news.
Zulfikli said that Harakahdaily had been publishing anti-Taib news as it also reproduced contents from the above-mentioned sites.
“Sometimes, we reprint stories from Sarawak Report, sometimes we use it as a source for our own stories,” he said.
Zulfikli said that the source of the attack could not be identified as Harakahdaily’s domain name was purchased by a domain supplier whose details he did not wish to reveal.
By Tarani Palani
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