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- Malaysian hackers strike twice
- By Reuters
- February 21, 1997, 1:15 p.m. PT
-
- KUALA LUMPUR, Malaysia--Malaysia's
- national telecommunications company said today
- that it has temporarily halted access to its home
- page after the site was hacked twice this week.
-
- Telekom Malaysia said that its TMnet home page
- was struck on Tuesday by a hacker who did not
- sabotage any data on the site but left a message on
- the page saying: "This site has been hacked!!!"
-
- On Thursday, the message, "This site has been
- hacked again!!!" was seen on the TMnet page,
- Telekom said.
-
- "At 11:09 a.m. [on Thursday], the TMnet home
- page was taken out from the server," a Telekom
- statement said. "Access to the Web server was
- shut down temporarily to allow investigation."
-
- The culprit in the first incident has been identified
- following an investigation, Telekom said. It did not
- name the person.
-
- The second hacker, however, "has used much
- more sophisticated methods to bypass the login
- procedure and exploit what is obviously a security
- vulnerability," the statement said.
-
- Telekom said it has yet to determine whether the
- same person was responsible for the second
- intrusion. It said it is still trying to trace the second
- hacker.
-
- Telekom's telco unit chief operating officer Abdul
- Rahim Daud said TMnet is looking very seriously
- at improving its system security, the national
- Bernama news agency reported.
-
- "The Internet and Web is a public domain and thus
- penetration is nothing new, but we are taking
- precautions and are learning as we go along,"
- Bernama quoted him as saying.
-
- TMnet is one of two ISPs in Malaysia. The first
- Internet provider was the Malaysian Institute of
- Microelectronics System's (Mimos) Jaring, which
- has been operating since 1992.
-
- Telekom's ordeal is not the first publicized case of
- hacking in Malaysia.
-
- Last January, Asia Connect, which provides
- Internet solutions, found itself $39,000 poorer
- after two hackers took up a challenge to break
- into its computer security system.
-
- The two Malaysians took only minutes to break
- into the company's $100,000 security system after
- it said it would offer $19,500 to anyone who could
- perform the feat.
-
- Story Copyright ⌐ 1996 Reuters Limited. All rights
- reserved.
-
-