Websites belonging to several political parties were on Wednesday subjected to DDoS (distributed denial-of-service) attack, raising fears that it was done to prevent the public from accessing necessary information.
A DDos attack is a form of a cyber attack where the perpetrator aims to make a machine or network resource unavailable to its intended users by disrupting services of a host connected to the internet.
Open Web Application Security Project (OWASP) Malaysia chief developer, Mohd Fazli Azran said, he feared that the attack was just the beginning of more things to come at the end of the 14th General Election (GE14).
“We do not know why the hackers did so. What is more worrying is, what will they do after GE14 ends?
“Several websites could not be accessed while others have been diverted to temporary sites.
“Is this just an interference or is there something more to it?” he asked.
Earlier in the day, the websites of several political parties were believed to have been hacked by irresponsible quarters. A number of political leaders were also spammed by phone calls from international numbers on the eve of polling day.
Mohd Fazli advised the web developers of these political parties’ websites to increase their security features to prevent any further forms of cyber attacks such as intrusion, DDoS as well as virus attacks.
“For most of these websites, the security features are at a bare minimum, making them vulnerable to attacks.
https://www.nst.com.my/news/nation/2018/05/367740/ddos-attacks-temporarily-cripple-political-parties-websites