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[h=2]CPF takes down its website for maintenance over 3 days[/h]
November 9th, 2013 |
Author: Editorial
Following the “defacing” of the Prime Minister’s Office (PMO) website on
Thursday (7 Nov) night by apparent members of hacktivist group Anonymous, CPF
Board announced yesterday (8 Nov) that it will be carrying out “preventive
maintenance” on its website and e-services as “part of its continual enhanced
vigilance efforts”.
In a statement yesterday evening, CPF Board said its website and e-services
will not be available from 9pm on Friday (8 Nov) to 8am on Monday (11 Nov), a
total of 3 days.
This is to enable the board to strengthen its website and e-services, it
said.
Apologising for the inconvenience caused, the board said that members and
employers can visit its service centres located at Bishan, Jurong, Tampines and
Woodlands during office hours if urgent assistance is needed.
However prior to its maintenance landing page being deployed, a reader of TR
Emeritus (TRE), Mr Smint Teo noticed that the CPF Board’s website was
showing the following error when he visited it.
A quick search on the Internet reveals that it is an Apache (a web server)
error caused mostly by misconfigured php settings on the server that was hosting
the website.
Apparently, some IT experts were attempting to implement a script or modify
the server settings, but accidentally crashed the server. It is very hard to
diagnose such errors as it would normally not show up in the server’s error
logs.
Which begs the question:
If it was intended to be taken down for planned maintenance, why bother to
tweak the server when it was online?
In any case, the PMO website was hacked on a day after PM Lee vowed to hunt
down Anonymous, the group which issued a statement last week, threatening to
wage cyber war against the Singapore government.
Mr Lee said, “We will spare no effort to try and track down the culprits and
if we can find him, we will bring him to justice and he will be dealt with
severely.”
Last week, a day after the video threat by the hacktivists was posted online,
the Straits Times (ST) website was hacked by “The Messiah” who claimed to be
affiliated with Anonymous (‘The Messiah takes ST to task for ‘misleading the people’‘). The
Messiah said that ST had twisted the words in Anonymous’ video while reporting
on the incident. ST had conveniently modified the sentence in the video, “war
against the Singapore Government” to “war against Singapore” in its
reporting.
International news agency AFP has observed that “social media and independent
websites have become the main arenas of political debate in Singapore, whose
mainstream newspapers and broadcasters are widely perceived to be
pro-government” [Link].
Anonymous, or Hacker Anonymous Collective as its full name is, threatened to
mount cyber attacks against the Singapore government in protest against new
licensing rules for news websites.
The new internet licensing rules have sparked anger in the blogging and
social media community, which says they are designed to muzzle freedom of
expression.
Following the “defacing” of the Prime Minister’s Office (PMO) website on
Thursday (7 Nov) night by apparent members of hacktivist group Anonymous, CPF
Board announced yesterday (8 Nov) that it will be carrying out “preventive
maintenance” on its website and e-services as “part of its continual enhanced
vigilance efforts”.
will not be available from 9pm on Friday (8 Nov) to 8am on Monday (11 Nov), a
total of 3 days.
This is to enable the board to strengthen its website and e-services, it
said.
Apologising for the inconvenience caused, the board said that members and
employers can visit its service centres located at Bishan, Jurong, Tampines and
Woodlands during office hours if urgent assistance is needed.
However prior to its maintenance landing page being deployed, a reader of TR
Emeritus (TRE), Mr Smint Teo noticed that the CPF Board’s website was
showing the following error when he visited it.
A quick search on the Internet reveals that it is an Apache (a web server)
error caused mostly by misconfigured php settings on the server that was hosting
the website.
Apparently, some IT experts were attempting to implement a script or modify
the server settings, but accidentally crashed the server. It is very hard to
diagnose such errors as it would normally not show up in the server’s error
logs.
Which begs the question:
If it was intended to be taken down for planned maintenance, why bother to
tweak the server when it was online?
down Anonymous, the group which issued a statement last week, threatening to
wage cyber war against the Singapore government.
Mr Lee said, “We will spare no effort to try and track down the culprits and
if we can find him, we will bring him to justice and he will be dealt with
severely.”
Last week, a day after the video threat by the hacktivists was posted online,
the Straits Times (ST) website was hacked by “The Messiah” who claimed to be
affiliated with Anonymous (‘The Messiah takes ST to task for ‘misleading the people’‘). The
Messiah said that ST had twisted the words in Anonymous’ video while reporting
on the incident. ST had conveniently modified the sentence in the video, “war
against the Singapore Government” to “war against Singapore” in its
reporting.
International news agency AFP has observed that “social media and independent
websites have become the main arenas of political debate in Singapore, whose
mainstream newspapers and broadcasters are widely perceived to be
pro-government” [Link].
Anonymous, or Hacker Anonymous Collective as its full name is, threatened to
mount cyber attacks against the Singapore government in protest against new
licensing rules for news websites.
The new internet licensing rules have sparked anger in the blogging and
social media community, which says they are designed to muzzle freedom of
expression.
