The Malaysian government has beefed-up its cyber defences in response to the latest threat from online hacktivist group Anonymous that it will target government’s online portal over online censorship in the country.
The hacker group has said that it would unleash ‘Operation Malaysia’ on the government portal from Wednesday 1930 GMT, reported Reuters quoting the police chief. It is the same day when the world prepares to watch one of the darkest lunar eclipses of recent times.
‘Operation Malaysia’ is intended to be a revenge act against government censoring of whistle-blower site WikiLeaks.
Last week, industry regulator Malaysian Communication and Multimedia Commission had banned 10 file-sharing sites to combat piracy. Thousands of Malaysians took to the roads in protest of the decision. The threat from the hacking group is also believed to be in response to the ban.
In a posting on pastebin.com, Anonymous said, "The Internet is here for freedom, without fear of government interference."
"We fear that if you make further decisions to take away human freedom. We are obligated to act fast and have no mercy."
Malaysia’s Information Minister Rais Yatim said that Anonymous had "misunderstood realities of the day", adding the move to ban the sites were meant to censor cyber crimes.
Malaysia’s police chief has said that authorities will probe and find out the people behind the threats.
Malaysian police chief Ismail Omar told Reuters, "We have received word of this threat. There are many agencies involved in this and we will get to the bottom of this."
"Investigation needs to be done and we need to protect our systems at the same time."
Anonymous is infamous for bringing down the websites of MasterCard and Paypal after the companies withdrew financial services to WikiLeaks. The hacking group has also used DDoS attacks to targeted government websites in Syria, Tunisia, Egypt and India over online censorship, corruption and other political issues.
Meanwhile, according the BBC, Lulz Security (LulzSec), another hacker group responsible for Sonypictures.com and IfraGard hack attacks, has posted messages in Twitter that it has opened a telephone request line for its followers to suggest targets for hacking.
