Hacker strikes at Malaysian Insider

(The Star) PETALING JAYA: Online news portal Malaysian Insider was hacked.

Its homepage went blank between 8.30pm and 8.45pm yesterday and was replaced by a banner proclaiming “Tribute to MalangSial (bad luck)”.

It was the first time the site had been attacked.

About 15 minutes later, the Insider technology team restored the main portions of the site.

As at press time, the team was reposting news reports lost in the attack.

Consultant editor Leslie Lau described the hacking as “an inconvenience”.

“We don’t know the reason and we do not know who we may have offended to warrant such an act. I don’t know what kind of message the perpetrator is trying to send to us,” he said.

Lau said the website security would be increased to prevent a recurrence of the incident.

In a message posted on its website following the hacking, the Insider asked its readers to avoid any unnecessary or irresponsible speculation.

A security consultant for the site, who asked to remain anonymous, said he would have a lead on where the attack originated from by today.

“Our security people are tracing the IP address of the hacker,” said Lau said.

Each and every computer on the Web has a unique Internet protocol address that identifies the machine and its location.

Another online news site, Malaysiakini, said its system was hit by an unsuccesful distributed denial-of-service (DDoS) attack a few days ago.

A spokesman for Malaysiakini, who also asked not to be named, said such attempts were nothing new to the site.

“We are hit by such attempts quite regularly. We’re used to it,” she said.

A DDoS attack saturates a computer network with so much communications requests that the system becomes unable to respond to legitimate traffic.

Under Malaysian law, anyone found guilty of hacking into a computer can be fined up to RM100,000 or be jailed up to seven years, or both.