Malaysia is still in the midst of investigating, monitoring and working closely with other agencies to mitigate the recent incident where 33 Malaysian websites were hacked, according to CyberSecurity Malaysia. It is believed that a group of hackers from Indonesia was responsible for this incident following the recent Indonesian flag misprint in the Kuala Lumpur 2017 SEA Games’ official souvenir booklet.
CyberSecurity Malaysia CEO Amirudin Abdul Wahab said the agency has been receiving complaints on several hacking incidents targeting Malaysian websites, confidential information leaks and possible distributed denial of services (DDOS) attacks. “For preventive measure, we have released an alert to advise system administrators to take the necessary steps to secure their systems against unwanted incidents as well as other security threats,” Amirudin said in a statement. The agency had released several alerts and advisories on current threats and vulnerabilities. System administrators and internet users must be aware of these threats and vulnerabilities by applying necessary patches and updates.
Following the incident, CyberSecurity Malaysia is recommending organisations to apply defense-in-depth strategy to protect their networks. They need to make sure that their systems, applications and third-party add-ons are updated with latest upgrades and security patches. All the organisations are advised to keep their systems updated and install antivirus software to reduce the vulnerability of being manipulated by intruders.
AFP reported that a group of hackers, calling themselves the ExtremeCrew had ratcheted up the neighbourly tiff by defacing Malaysian websites. Indonesian national police spokesman Martinus Sitompul was quoted saying that it was unclear the perpetrators were Indonesians. “If they need our assistance, of course, we are ready to help but it’s still not confirmed that these hackers are even Indonesians,” he told AFP.
On Sunday, Malaysia had apologised for the upside-down printing of Indonesia’s flag in the souvenir guidebook for the SEA Games. “We very much regret the mistake and trust the strong bond between the two countries will further strengthen the spirit of the SEA Games. We would like to sincerely apologise to the people of Indonesia for the inadvertent error of publishing the wrong flag for Indonesia.”