PM: MAHB hit by hackers, govt shuts down demand for '10m dollars'

The Malaysia Airports Holdings Berhad (MAHB) digital system was recently attacked by hackers who demanded “10 million dollars”, according to Prime Minister Anwar Ibrahim.

In his speech at the 218th Police Day celebration this morning, he revealed that the cyber attack happened “about one or two days” ago.

However, he said, the government decided not to bow down to the criminals and instead planned to allocate more budget to improve Malaysia’s cyber security.

“Yesterday we discussed cyberattacks and hacking, and (an incident) that was quite serious involving MAHB about one or two days ago.

“The discussion revolved around how we plan to address demands from the hackers, who wanted 10 million dollars and such.

“When I was informed about this, alhamdulillah it was during Ramadan, I didn’t even wait five seconds to say no (to the demands).

“There is no way this country will be safe if its leaders and system allow us to bow down to ultimatums from criminals or traitors, either foreign or domestic,” Anwar said.

The prime minister did not go into much detail about the cyber attack incident and whether it has been resolved.

While he admitted that such a decision has its risks, he said the incident shows the need for the country to allocate more resources to the police and Bank Negara, among others, to prepare themselves for cyber threats.

Yesterday, former Wangsa Maju MP Wee Choo Keong in an X post questioned whether MAHB had been a victim of a cyber attack, alleging there was a system outage at KLIA and KLIA 2.

Details are scarce even on social media, but according to Wee and at least one other social media post, Malaysiakini found flight information displays were among those affected.

Instead, arrival and display information were manually updated on whiteboards.

Wee alleged that check-in counters and baggage handling systems were also affected during the reportedly 10-hour outage.

Neither MAHB nor the Transport Ministry have issued a statement on the matter as of writing.

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