www.gov.my back in action

Despite being hacked by the group of hackers, the official website for the government of Malaysia is back in action, Malaysia’s Communications and Multimedia Commission (MCMC) said that it detected service outages due to attack to 91 websites, 51 websites of which are in the .gov.my domain and that 41 of the sites suffered various levels of disruption including http://malaysia.gov.my and http://sabahtourism.com. The ‘Operation Malaysia’ was executed by an international hackers group called “Anonymous” who had given ample time by warning the government of their intention prior to the attack. It was believed that a local-based Dragon Force was part of the attackers.

Warning message from the hackers, Anonymous:

Greetings, Malaysia,

We have seen the censorship taken by the Malaysian government, blocking sites like The Pirate Bay, and WikiLeaks. Malaysia is one of the world’s strictest governments, even blocking out movies, and television shows. These acts of censorship are inexcusable. You are taking away a basic human right. The internet is here for freedom, without fear of government interference. Do not think that no one else notices. Your structured government has done the talking, and we hear loud and clear. Let this be an announcement to all your people. This is a sign, a warning, and an opportunity to listen to ideas above your own. In a way you are being stubborn. But how will this help anyone or your country. We fear that if you make further decisions to take away human freedom. We are obligated to act fast and have no mercy. For rules were meant to be broken. And corruption was meant to be washed away and forgiven. Now we will wash your corruption away so be prepared. Take this as a favor.
We are Anonymous.
We are Legion.
We do not forgive.
We do not forget.
Expect Us.

MCMC said the attack started at 11:30pm Wednesday and since then many websites have recovered. MCMC admitted even its own website was attacked. However certain sites such as SabahTourism.com is still down as of time this blog is written.

AN OFFICIAL STATEMENT FROM THE MALAYSIAN
COMMUNICATIONS AND MULTIMEDIA COMMISSION (MCMC) IN
RELATION TO THE HACKING OF MALAYSIAN GOVERNMENT
WEBSITES BY UNKNOWN HACKERS

Cyberjaya – Regarding the threat by unknown hackers to attack

websites with the .gov.my domain, the Malaysian Communications and

Multimedia Commission (MCMC) confirms that there were indeed

attempts to hack several websites, including www.skmm.gov.my. The

attempt to hack MCMC’s website was not successful.

These attacks started at approximately 11.30pm, on 15 June 2011. We

are able to confirm that 51 .gov.my websites were attacked and there

has been disruption at various levels to at least 41 of those websites.

However, we do not expect the overall recovery to these websites to

take long as most websites have already recovered from the attack.

Our monitoring of the situation showed that there was a reduced level

of attacks by 4.00am this morning and upon further evaluation, so far

we gauge that there has been little impact on Malaysian users as a

result of this attack.

MCMC’s Network Security Center has been making concerted efforts to

mitigate the attacks around the clock and will continue to work with

other enforcement agencies and security experts as well service

providers to monitor the situation.

The public is advised to report any information they may have

regarding the identity of these hackers as the act to disrupt network

services is a serious offence, which is punishable by law."

Note : 

Clear and present danger to Government's website is most vulnerable cyber threat ever happened. The government should co-operate with local hacker to neutralize the attack in future, because only hacker know how to treat another hackers threat, not a normal programmer with monthly paycheck. Some sources said there is no challenging or less challenging action between the hacker and web's admin at the time of intrusion.