Tuesday February 19, 2013
Cops probing hacking of Info Department websites
By FARIK ZOLKEPLI and LEE YEN MUN
farik@thestar.com.my
PETALING JAYA: Bukit Aman's cyber crime unit has started investigating the hacking of the Information Department's websites where a hoax report was posted about Prime Minister Datuk Seri Najib Tun Razak's resignation.
Federal CyberSecurity and Multimedia Investigation Division director Asst Comm Mohd Kamaruddin Din said police would rope in the assistance of CyberSecurity Malaysia as well as the Internet provider in tracking the down the hacker.
The Information Department's director-general Datuk Ibrahim Abdul Rahman, in refuting the hoax report, said it was posted on its e-Press and e-Akhbar websites by irresponsible hackers who intended to cause confusion among the public.
Ibrahim said the hoax announcement was displayed on the websites at 6am yesterday but was removed by the department two hours later upon its discovery.
“These two systems were hacked into and a message was inserted to announce that the Prime Minister had resigned.
“The statement took on the look' of an official message released by the department although it was not endorsed by the Government nor the department,” he said after lodging a police report on the matter at the Putrajaya police headquarters yesterday.
Apart from the hoax resignation announcement, another statement purportedly bearing the demands of the rakyat was also uploaded to the websites without the department's authorisation.
The e-Press is the Government's official organ for the media to obtain information on official functions while the e-Akhbar contains articles in Bahasa Malaysia translated from vernacular news sources.
The department took note of the matter at 8.05am after receiving a tip-off from a lecturer in Pahang, who had suspected something amiss after reading the hoax announcements.
A foreign Internet Protocol (IP) address was used to upload the statements, Ibrahim said.
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