In 2008, the historic event of March 8 matched Malaysia with the cyberspace for a good reason. Many attributed the role of the New Media in helping to bring about a major shift in the electoral landscape of the country.
Many also expected the component parties in the Barisan Nasional coalition to wake-up and catch-up on their engagement with the rakyat in cyberspace. But what happened in the last few months was indeed a development but in the wrong direction.
It was not launching of new websites or an intensified cyber-campaign by the government. It was the beginning of intensified hacking or a even cyber-terrorism campaign targeting key free information sites.
Yesterday, a friend reported to me that the website of Malaysian Auditor-General’s Department had been compromised. It only showed a big ‘hacked’ banner by one ‘cyber_945'. At the time of writing, the site is completely down.
Back in September, the popular news portal ‘Malaysia Today’ was having a round of attacks aiming to make it completely inaccessible to its readers using what is called ‘distributed denial-of-service attack’ or DDoS. It lasted for almost two weeks, causing disruption, although it did not manage to completely kncok it out of action. Its editor, Raja Petra Kamarudin has a detailed description of the incident.
Earlier, between late July and early August, it was the turn of the blogsite of Anwar Ibrahim, Malaysia’s opposition leader. It was similar to what ‘Malaysia Today’ experienced in that the primary objective of this cyber-campaign was to make the site inaccessible to its readers.
Cyber-attacks are no news. What is interesting is the timing of these three events (and these are only what I know of as I have not done a comprehensive research for other attacks.) In the case of the Auditor-General Department’s website, the auditor-general himself has just recently released reports of rampant corrupt practices amongst the various government agencies.
The website has surely become a popular destination of the rakyat wanting to know more. In September, Raja Petra released a bombshell in an exposé that suggests the cabinet’s knowledge and collusion in the Port Klang Free Zone (PKFZ)scandal.
On Aug 1, Malaysians came out in the thousands to protest against the draconian law, the Internal Security Act (ISA). The campaign was called for by the opposition and Anwar’s blogsite naturally became the place to get information about the protest.
While the auditor-general’s website was temporarily out of action, ‘Malaysia Today’ and Anwar Ibrahim’s blog continue to run unimpeded. However, the disruptions that happened during the attacks and the denial of access call into the question Malaysian democracy in cyber-space.
One cannot help but to wonder if there is a concerted effort to hamper information access during key events in Malaysian politics. For sure, this is certainly not the increased ‘political engagement’ we want to see in the cyber-space post March 8.