Sabah tourism user data leaked after attacks

Despite the police assurance that no data has been compromised in the attacks on government websites last night, a set of user data allegedly leaked from Sabah tourism official website has been published over the Internet.

A posting on a free anonymous web hosting portal, has exposed the data of 392 user accounts. The details include user email, user name, first and last name, as well as their encrypted passwords.

The portal claimed that more than 3,456 accounts are at risk but had released details of only 392 so far.

Server details said to from the one that hosts the Sabah tourism website are also on the portal.

Meanwhile, The Star/Asia News Network reported that the defaced site was spotted early yesterday by the chief executive of a company that organises security conferences.

"A portion of the website was deleted when I saw it," said Dhillon Andrew Kannabhiran, who heads Hack In The Box (M) Sdn Bhd. "I had just returned from an overseas trip," the portal said.

The Sabah Tourism website has since gone offline.

F-Secure Corporation (M) Sdn Bhd, a computer security software company, corroborated Dhillon's account.

Goh Su Gim, its security adviser for Asia, said the Sabah Tourism site had been compromised.

Threat of more exposures

"Worse still, the data from 392 user accounts were stolen from the site and released to the public," he told The Star/ANN.

On the webpage where the hackers posted the data, they claimed they had the details of more than 3,400 users from the Sabah Tourism site, but they were only exposing the 392, he added.

The hackers also claimed to be Anonymous members and that they meant no harm, and only wanted to show the vulnerability of this site, he said.

The Star/ANN report also quoted Dhillon, as saying that the www.tourmalaysia.com.my site was also hacked and defaced yesterday.

He had checked the site after viewing the hacked Sabah Tourism website. It was defaced with words that included "Deface by Kambeng Merah: Credit to DarkJawa".

Another website which suffered the same fate was www.cidb.gov.my belonging to the Construction Industry Development Board (CIDB).

It was defaced with a long message that scolded the government for censoring the Internet. However, a while later, the site was back to normal.

Cyber terrorists keep their word

Dhillion said he believed these sites may not have been hacked by Anonymous.

"The hacker group is into co-ordinated attacks and keeps to its word when it comes to launching its attacks," he said.

"These are likely independent hackers taking advantage of the publicity."

CyberSecurity Malaysia, responsible for the nation's borders in cyberspace, confirmed that several websites were hacked. But it declined to say how many and which were the sites.

"At present, we are not able to elaborate further," said Lt Col (Rtd) Datuk Husin Jazri, chief executive officer of CyberSecurity.

He said rectification works were being conducted by the relevant authorities to address the situation, The Star/ANN reported.

According to the Malaysian Communications and Multimedia Commission (MCMC), 51 websites had been hit with at least 41 disrupted, during the attacks which began shortly before midnight on Wednesday.

However, police chief Ismail Omar was quoted by Reuters then as saying that no personal or financial data had so far been poached but the authorities were trying to determine the extent of the attacks.

Last week, the Malaysian Communication and Multimedia Commission (MCMC) had announced that 10 websites including Pirate Bay and Megaupload had been blocked for infringing copyright laws.

Subsequently the hackers uploaded a short clip on video-sharing website YouTube threatening retaliatory strikes on government websites from today for imposing the ban.

By Kuek Ser Kuang Keng Msiakini

Cyber war by activists

At least 41 websites hacked, no data compromised

At least 41 government websites were hacked into overnight but no personal or financial data were compromised, officials said today, as the South-East Asian 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 said.

The attacks, which began shortly before midnight yesterday, follow a warning by Internet vigilante group Anonymous, which said it would attack the government's official portal to punish it for censoring WikiLeaks, the website that aims to expose governments and corporations by leaking secret documents.

"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.

It did not name the sites which were attacked but targets included the government's online portal www.malaysia.gov.my, and the webpages of the fire and emergency services department www.bomba. gov.my and the land public transport commission www.spad.gov.my.

Inspector-general of police Ismail Omar (left) told Reuters no personal or financial data had so far been stolen but the authorities were trying to determine the extent of the attacks.

It was not immediately clear if the attacks were launched by Anonymous or other hackers.

Anonymous is a grouping of global activists lobbying for Internet freedom who frequently try to shut down the websites of businesses and other organisations that they oppose.

'Blocking amounts to denial of human rights'

The activists gained prominence when they temporarily crippled the websites of MasterCard and Paypal that cut off financial services to WikiLeaks.

A spate of cyber attacks on multinational firms and institutions, from the US Central Intelligence Agency to Citigroup to the International Monetary Fund, has raised concerns that governments and the private sector may struggle to defend themselves against hackers.

In an earlier Internet posting, Anonymous said Malaysia's censorship of films and television shows and its blocking of file-sharing websites amounted to a denial of human rights.

The communication commission last week banned 10 file-sharing sites and ordered Internet service providers such as Telekom Malaysia and Maxis to block access.

The restrictions have outraged ordinary Malaysians, and several people took to Twitter today to express support for the cyber attacks.

"Now to count how many sites have gotten whacked so far," said a tweet posted by Rhyden. "I knew the government's IT defence team was pathetic."

The country has a vibrant Internet culture that has gained a mass following in an environment where the mainstream media is tightly controlled. The government has in the past charged bloggers with sedition, often detaining suspects for long periods without trial.

- Reuters

Harakahdaily, the latest news portal to be hacked

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

BN’s cyber-attacks designed to ‘rig’ the Sarawak polls

Sarawakians are prevented from seeking, receiving and sharing vital information that can help them decide on their representatives and government.


Both Sarawak Report and Malaysiakini have been experiencing unrelenting denial-of-service attacks that temporarily brought them down in the closing days of the Sarawak state election.

On April 16, around one million voters in Sarawak will choose their new state government. These alternative media sites have been dispensing vital information to help the Sarawak voters decide who they want to elect as their parliamentary representative and which party to lead them.

In order to exercise their right to vote, accurate and timely information about the candidates, political parties and election manifestos, as well as the crucial issues of the day and dirty tactics have all been reported by these sites.

When respected news portals like Malaysiakini and the independent media site, Sarawak Report were brought down, it must mean that the information these sites contained, was something that BN did not want released to the public.

Malaysiakini is a popular alternative online newspaper whilst Sarawak Report is a website which is critical of Sarawak Chief Minister Taib Mahmud.

Sarawak Report has published detailed allegations about Taib and his family’s extensive business interests, disproportionate wealth, massive land grabs, his properties in over four continents and his dependence on witchcraft (using bomohs) for making critical decisions of state.

Both these sites are currently experiencing a full-scale Distributed Denial of Service (DDoS).
Selangor Mentri Besar Khalid Ibrahim has condemned the cyber-attacks: “The cowardly actions of the perpetrators this close to election day reflect a deep insecurity about the upcoming results of the Sarawak elections. These attacks can only mean that parties sympathetic to BN greatly fear the spread of the truth – truth that will hasten the impending departure of Taib Mahmud and his corrupt government.

“This is exactly the same suppression of the groundswell of a popular uprising and the use of the internet to ignite a people’s movement that was seen in the Middle East revolutions,” said Khalid.

When ex-president Hosni Mubarak of Egypt was faced with the popular uprising, one of the first things he did was to shut off the Internet and mobile phones, before blocking Twitter and Facebook. He knew that these tools were used to coordinate and spread the word about the demonstrations that were scheduled for Jan 25.
Without these mass organising tools, it is highly likely that fewer people would have known about the protests, or summoned the kind of courage that was made possible by knowing you’re not the only one sticking your neck out. Without them, fewer people might have shown up.

BN is afraid that by completely switching off the internet, it might hasten a revolution similar to the one in Egypt. That is why it has only attacked the sites it finds most threatening.

BN has tricked the Sarawak people of its riches. It has used Taib to divert most of the money derived from petroleum into the coffers at Putrajaya and possibly straight into Umno. Taib is allowed a free rein to do whatever he pleases with the rest of Sarawak’s natural resources, like timber.

Big money attacks

Malaysiakini was attacked on April 12, incapacitating its two locally hosted servers and forcing the owners of the paid subscription site to resort to Facebook, WordPress and other free publishing platforms to get their news out.

In the wake of these attacks, Malaysiakini has received a wave of public support.

“We’ve been receiving numerous phone calls and emails urging us to persevere,” said Malaysiakini CEO Premesh Chandran.

“Readers have also been very generous in making donations to Malaysiakini and we thank them for their support,” he added.

Malaysiakini has plans to deploy more servers to cope with the increased traffic over the next few days.
“We expect more than one million people to follow the Sarawak election results live on Saturday. We are preparing as much capacity as possible to support the traffic,’ said Premesh.

The cyber-attack which incapacitated Sarawak Report started on April 10.

Author and founder Clare Rewcastle Brown said, “The attack on Sarawak Report has been ‘unprecedented’, according to one of the largest hosting companies in the world, which has been forced to drop our site in order to continue operations.

“We suffered yet another distributed denial of service attack last night. It happened around 8pm UK time after a build-up over a number of hours. This was far larger than the previous attacks over the weekend, and separate to a hacking attack the day before.”
Clare said the website host, a major company in the US, said this was “something that went above what they know”.
According to her, a senior engineer from the hosting company said it was an unprecedented denial-of-service attack against the website, which was “so big that it was affecting their whole server infrastructure”.
“Therefore, we were kindly asked not to host our website with them again because they cannot handle such levels of attack.
“We are now up in a number of capacities, including WordPress. It is noted that WordPress, which is considered the world’s rock-solid hosting site, reported that for the first time yesterday they were nearly brought down by a hacking attack.”

Most organised hacker

If what the hosting companies say is true, then big money is behind all these cyber-attacks.
If WordPress, one the world’s biggest hosting sites was nearly brought down, then the people behind these attacks are afraid, and desperate.

With much to lose, BN and the people affiliated to it are prepared to silence Sarawak Report and Malaysiakini, so that the people of Sarawak are prevented from seeking, receiving and sharing vital information that can help them decide on their representatives and government.

How amusing that APCO, which must be orchestrating these attacks, has become one of the largest and most well organised hacker in the world.

By Mariam Mokhtar, a petroleum chemist and an environmental pollution-control scientist, is a columnist with FMT

Malaysiakini crippled by cyber attacks

KUALA LUMPUR: Malaysia’s top news portal Malaysiakini remained crippled today, more than 24 hours after cyber attackers struck ahead of hotly contested state elections on Borneo island.


Steven Gan, its co-founder and chief editor, said the site would continue to report on Saturday’s vote in Sarawak state despite the shutdown, which came days after whistleblowing website Sarawak Report was hit by a similar attack.

“I believe the attack is linked to our reporting on the campaigning for the Sarawak election and it is no coincidence that this has happened to us three days after Sarawak Report was also attacked,” he told AFP.
“We are trying to get our website up and running and we are providing our content for free at the moment as we will continue reporting on what is happening in Sarawak. We will not stop, we will prevail,” he added.
Malaysiakini, which gained international fame as an alternative source of news during the rule of former prime minister Dr Mahathir Mohamad, earns part of its revenues from subscriptions.

Gan said the “denial of service” attack began yesterday morning when the portal’s servers were swarmed by massive and coordinated traffic from overseas, forcing it to post its reports on blogsites as well as Twitter and Facebook.

Malaysia’s major newspapers and broadcasters are closely linked with the ruling Barisan Nasional (BN) coalition, but online news portals and blogs have become a lively forum for dissent and debate.
Saturday’s polls in Sarawak, a resource-rich but impoverished state, is viewed as a barometer of the BN’s popularity ahead of general election expected to be called by Prime Minister Najib Tun Razak this year.
However, a key issue in the election is the fate of the state’s chief minister Abdul Taib Mahmud, who has headed Sarawak since 1981.

Websites such as Sarawak Report have been publishing articles on the wealth accumulated by Taib and his family, as well as allegations linking his close friends to the exploitation of resources in the oil, mineral and timber-rich state.

Malaysiakini has been reporting closely on the state election over the last two weeks and published articles on alleged vote-buying by BN campaigners, as well as the post-election fate of Taib amid a clamour from critics for him to step down.

Although BN is expected to retain power in Sarawak, where it held 63 of the 71 seats in the state assembly before it was dissolved in March, some analysts say the ruling coalition may lose seats in Saturday’s vote.

The opposition is aiming to deny the government a two-thirds majority that effectively allows the BN to pass legislation without any obstruction.
- AFP