At least six Malaysian government websites were hacked into overnight after the Internet vigilante group Anonymous threatened to punish the authorities for censorship.
Sites that were targeted included the government's online portal , and the webpages of the information ministry , the fire and emergency services department and the land public transport commission .
Anonymous had warned it would attack the Malaysian government's online portal from Wednesday 1930 GMT to teach the country a lesson for censoring whistle-blower site WikiLeaks in an attack codenamed "Operation Malaysia"
- Hackers Threaten Government Portal (15/6/2011)
Malaysian police chief Ismail Omar said he did not believe any personal or financial data had so far been stolen. But he said: "It is too early to say what is the extent of the damage."
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. Malaysia could be the latest target in a cyber-war waged by the activists, who 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 U.S. Central Intelligence Agency to Citigroup to the International Monetary Fund, has raised concerns that governments and the private sector may struggle to defend against hackers. The site, www.cia.gov, was unavailable for a few minutes on Wednesday evening, immediately after the group, Lulz Security announced the attack via Twitter. Lulz broke into a public website of the U.S. Senate over the weekend and released data stolen from the legislative body's computer servers.
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