Malaysian, Filipino hackers go to war in cyberspace

PETALING JAYA: Cyber attacks raged between Malaysian and Filipino hackers over the weekend, mirroring the ground skirmishes in Sabah on Friday and Saturday.

Hackers claiming to be from Malaysian and Filipino chapters of the hacktivist group Anonymous attacked websites of both countries.

It was believed that the first online attacks were made by Malaysians, hours after a skirmish erupted between police and Sulu gunmen on Friday.

A message written in Tagalog posted on Anonymous Malaysia's Facebook page that day warned Filipinos that they would strike.

Filipino blog Pinoy Tech News first reported that some of their government websites were hit by denial-of-service (DoS) attacks.

Others were defaced.

Filipino hackers then retaliated, attacking and defacing several Malaysian private and Government-owned websites.

Some claimed to have crashed some Government websites, and publicly announced their exploits over Facebook.

They also called for their followers to launch DoS attacks against local sites.

A statement allegedly made by Anonymous has called for hackers of both countries to stand down.

“The petty cyber-war will gain us nothing but wrong impressions from ordinary people...Let us help both The Philippines and Malaysia unite, not find a reason to fight,” it said.

This did not dissuade hackers however, who are continuing their attacks as of Sunday afternoon.

CyberSecurity Malaysia chief executive officer Dr Amirudin Abdul Wahab said that the Government was well aware of the matter but declined further comment.