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| Southeast Asia |
| Malaysian news portal crippled by cyberattacks |
| 2011-04-14 |
| [Straits Times] MALAYSIA'S top news portal Malaysiakini remained crippled on Wednesday, more than 24 hours after cyber attackers struck ahead of hotly contested state elections on Borneo island. Mr Steven Gan, its co-founder and chief editor, said the site would continue to report on Saturday's vote in Sarawak state despite the shutdown, which came days after whistleblowing website Sarawak Report was hit by a similar attack. 'I believe the attack is linked to our reporting on the campaigning for the Sarawak elections and it is no coincidence that this has happened to us three days after Sarawak Report was also attacked,' he told AFP. 'We are trying to get our website up and running and we are providing our content for free at the moment as we will continue reporting on what is happening in Sarawak. We will not stop, we will prevail,' he added. Malaysiakini, which gained international fame as an alternative source of news during the rule of former prime minister Mahathir Mohamad, earns part of its revenues from subscriptions. Mr Gan said the 'denial of service' attack began on Tuesday morning when the portal's servers were swarmed by massive and coordinated traffic from overseas, forcing it to post its reports on blogsites as well as Twitter and Facebook. Malaysia's major newspapers and broadcasters are closely linked with the ruling Barisan Nasional (BN) coalition, but online news portals and blogs have become a lively forum for dissent and debate. |
| Posted by:Fred |