The Human Resources Ministry gave an assurance that a hacking attempt on the Social Security Organisation (Socso)’s website would not affect its contributors.

Its minister V Sivakumar also said Socso overcame the cyberattack on its system, information database, and website, which began on Saturday (Dec 2).

“I would like to stress this attack will not affect Socso’s contributors’ welfare because the leaked data are data which had expired.

“In fact, I will continue to ensure that no party will be affected by this incident,” he said in a statement today.

Sivakumar added that the ministry will also increase mitigation efforts by cooperating with agencies from other ministries.

Earlier today, Communications and Digital Minister Fahmi Fadzil said CyberSecurity Malaysia (CSM), the National Cyber Security Agency (Nacsa), and the Personal Data Protection Department will probe the hacking claims.

At the time, he noted that certain information leaked on the dark web was old data that was repackaged and claimed to be new information.

Checks found that the data posted online - said to be “samples” from the purportedly leaked data - contained personal information such as names, addresses, phone numbers, IC numbers, race, salary, name of employers, blood types, medical history, bank account numbers, and more.

Socso, meanwhile, dismissed the purportedly leaked data as “dubious, incomplete, and outdated”. For instance, one of the purportedly leaked data clusters features data that was never collected by Socso since the agency was founded in 1971.

It said the cyberattack was initially aimed to cripple Socso’s daily operations, but when its ICT team was able to regain control, the hackers switched tack to tarnish the agency’s reputation instead.

“This cyberattack against Socso is not the first, but a series of attacks has already taken place with the last one being in September and was successfully contained,” it said.

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