Nine of 17 hacked government sites restored

[Millennium Falcon]

Nine of 17 hacked government sites restored

By Melissa Chong | Posted: 05 December 2012 2004 hrs

A screengrab of the hacked PA website. (PHOTO/TODAY)

SINGAPORE: Nine of 17 government websites that were hacked on Sunday have been restored.

The websites affected include those belonging to the People's Association (PA), the four Community Development Councils as well as the Malay Activity Executive Committees Council (MESRA).

In a statement, the PA said that it was working to "progressively restore the remaining sites".

A team calling themselves "High Tech Brazil Hackteam" are responsible for the hackings. According to a website that tracks activities of specific hackers, the team has already defaced more than 3,000 sites internationally.

Internet security experts said hackers' true intentions can be hard to establish, adding that are two types of hackers - "Hacktivists" - who have a political agenda - and others whose intention is data theft.

"Historically we've seen the hacking industry more prevalent or focused on data thefts… and I won't be surprised if the incident that we just had in Singapore that data was stolen from the website," said Stree Naidu, vice president for Asia Pacific and Japan at Imperva.

"It's hard to determine whether what their true intentions are unless we do a full analysis on the PA's website," he added.

Some of the organisations affected by the hackings have told Channel NewsAsia that data theft is not a concern as their corporate websites do not host confidential information.

"For this particular case that we're looking at, it seems like the hackers are just going around to collect trophies for their bragging rights," said Wally Lee, president of the Association of Information Security Professionals.

"Seems like they didn't make any political statement, it's just pure defacement on the website. It can happen to anyone, not just the government. They're just looking for any website out there that's vulnerable to attacks," Mr Lee added.

However experts have also warned that companies and governments need to remain vigilant to prevent such attacks.

"Suddenly in the last 2 years, we've seen more websites and organisations getting hacked. It's no longer just worrying about viruses or malwares as we conduct more transactions online, as we live our lives online through social media, the security of the websites we access have to be addressed," said Mr Naidu.

Mr Lim also said that making sure sites are up to date is crucial, and that companies "need to do certain kinds of audits, certain kind of testing, and invite third party audit firms to do penetration tests to make sure the site doesn't have any visible open holes that hackers can take advantage of".

- CNA/jc