Indonesian Hackers Allegedly Deface M'sian Websites over Flag Blunder

A screenshot of the hacked website displaying the booklet with the message, “My national flag is not a plaything”.

Kuala Lumpur, MINA – CyberSecurity Malaysia has confirmed that a group of hackers, believed to be from Indonesia, have defaced more than 30 Malaysian websites following the recent flag misprint in the Kuala Lumpur Sea Games’ official souvenir booklet, nst.com reported.

The group left a message: “Bendera Negaraku Bukanlah Mainan” (My national flag is not a plaything) on the sites that included seriputeri.edu.my and innercircle.my.

Its chief executive officer Datuk Dr Amiruddin Abdul Wahab said as of 3.40pm, 33 sites had been defaced.

“CyberSecurity Malaysia has been receiving notification on cases targeting Malaysian websites, confidential information being leaked and possible Distributed Denial of Services (DDOS) attacks.

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“The incident is real and we are currently investigating, monitoring and working closely with other agencies to address this,” he said in a statement today.

Amiruddin said as a preventive measure, the agency has released an alert to advise system administrators to take the necessary step to secure their systems against unwanted incidents as well as from other security threats.

CyberSecurity Malaysia has released several alerts and advisories on the latest threats and vulnerabilities.

“Organisations are recommended to apply defensive strategy to protect their network. Make sure that systems, applications and third party add-ons are updated with the latest upgrades and security patches.

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“If you’re running on older versions of operating systems or software, kindly ensure that they are upgraded to the latest versions – older versions may have some vulnerability that can be manipulated by intruders,” he said.

The Alerts and Advisories are available at: https://www.mycert.org.my/en/services/advisories/mycert/2017/main/index….

Members of the public can file report over the incident at Cyber999.

They can e-mail to [email protected] or [email protected]; call 1-300-88-2299 and +6019- 266 5850 (24-hour service); fax to +603-8945 3442 or SMS to 15888.

AFP earlier reported that a group of hackers, calling themselves the ExtremeCrew had ratcheted up the neighbourly tiff by defacing Malaysian websites.

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Indonesian national police spokesman Martinus Sitompul was quoted as saying that it was unclear the perpetrators were Indonesian.

“If they need our assistance of course we are ready to help but it’s still not confirmed these hackers are even Indonesians,” he told AFP.. (T/RS5/RS1)

Mi’raj Islamic News Agency (MINA)