Malaysia Today server down after attack
By uppercaise
Malaysia Today’s web servers have been out of action for most of today, leaving thousands of readers stranded with only an error message, in what appears to be an anniversary attack on the site a year after its founder and editor Raja Petra Kamarudin posted images of secret Cabinet papers on the RM12 billion Port Klang Free Zone scandal.
Visitors to the Malaysia Today site received an error message like the one shown above, which indicates that Malaysia Today’s database server has come under severe strain, possibly as a result of an internal attack. The site’s technical people hope to bring up the server later today but could give no estimate of how much longer it would be.
A year ago, Malaysia Today came under sustained attack over the course of week after Raja Petra posted images of Cabinet memorandums on Port Klang Free Zone. Several people, most prominently former MCA president Ling Liong Sik, now face criminal charges and speculation is that several more prominent politicians including a former Umno leader may be charged after the holidays.
Soon after RPK posted the images of the secret Cabinet papers, which the Government tacitly admitted were true, the Malaysia Today site came under a severe and sustained attack. Initially this consisted of a block on the site, placed at Malaysian internet service providers. After MT switched to an offshore server, a massive distributed denial-of-service attack was launched against it; a massive number of repeated requests were made from hundreds or thousands of computers simultaneously, thus shutting out all other users.
