The US Pacific free trade deal that's anything but free?

The US's draft TPP deal may grant new patent privileges and restrict net freedom, but it's secret – unless you're a multinational CEO

Patent protection increases what patients pay for drugs in the United States by close to $270bn a year (1.8% of GDP). Photograph: Graham Turner for the Guardian

"Free trade" is a sacred mantra in Washington. If anything is labeled as being "free trade", then everyone in the Washington establishment is required to bow down and support it. Otherwise, they are excommunicated from the list of respectable people and exiled to the land of protectionist Neanderthals.

This is essential background to understanding what is going on with the Trans-Pacific Partnership Agreement (TPP), a pact that the United States is negotiating with Australia, Canada, Japan and eight other countries in the Pacific region. The agreement is packaged as a "free trade" agreement. This label will force all of the respectable types in Washington to support it.

In reality, the deal has almost nothing to do with trade: actual trade barriers between these countries are already very low. The TPP is an effort to use the holy grail of free trade to impose conditions and override domestic laws in a way that would be almost impossible if the proposed measures had to go through the normal legislative process. The expectation is that by lining up powerful corporate interests, the governments will be able to ram this new "free trade" pact through legislatures on a take-it-or-leave-it basis.

As with all these multilateral agreements, the intention is to spread its reach through time. That means that anything the original parties to the TPP accept is likely to be imposed later on other countries in the region, and quite likely, on the rest of the world.

Government secrets
 
At this point, it's not really possible to discuss the merits of the TPP since the governments are keeping the proposed text a secret from the public. Only the negotiators themselves and a select group of corporate partners have access to the actual document. The top executives at General Electric, Goldman Sachs, and Pfizer probably all have drafts of the relevant sections of the TPP. However, the members of the relevant congressional committees have not yet been told what is being negotiated.

A few items that have been leaked give us some insight as to the direction of this pact. One major focus is will be stronger protection for intellectual property. In the case of recorded music and movies, we might see provisions similar to those that were in the Stop Online Privacy Act (Sopa). This would make internet intermediaries like Google, Facebook and, indeed, anyone with a website into a copyright cop.

Since these measures were hugely unpopular, Sopa could probably never pass as a standalone piece of legislation. But tied into a larger pact and blessed with "free trade" holy water, the entertainment industry may be able to get what it wants.

The pharmaceutical industry is also likely to be a big gainer from this pact. It has decided that the stronger patent rules that it inserted in the 1995 WTO agreement don't go far enough. It wants stronger and longer patent protection and also increased use of "data exclusivity". This is a government-granted monopoly, often as long as 14 years, that prohibits generic competitors from entering a market based on another company's test results that show a drug to be safe and effective.

Note that stronger copyright and patent protection, along with data exclusivity, is the opposite of free trade. They involve increased government intervention in the market; they restrict competition and lead to higher prices for consumers.

In fact, the costs associated with copyright and patent protection dwarf the costs associated with the tariffs or quotas that usually concern free traders. While the latter rarely raise the price of a product by more than 20-30%, patent protection for prescription drugs can allow drugs to sell for hundreds, or even thousands, of dollars per prescription when they would sell for $5-10 as a generic in a free market.

Patent protection

Patent protection increases what patients pay for drugs in the United States by close to $270bn a year (1.8% of GDP). In addition to making drugs unaffordable to people who need them, the economic costs implied by this market distortion are enormous.

There are many other provisions in this pact that are likely to be similarly controversial. The rules it creates would override domestic laws on the environment, workplace safety, and investment. Of course, it's not really possible to talk about the details because there are no publicly available drafts.

In principle, the TPP is exactly the sort of issue that should feature prominently in the fall elections. Voters should have a chance to decide if they want to vote for candidates who support raising the price of drugs for people in the United States and the rest of the world, or making us all into unpaid copyright cops. But there is no text and no discussion in the campaigns – and that is exactly how the corporations who stand to gain want it.

There is one way to spoil their fun. Just Foreign Policy is offering a reward, now up to $21,100, to WikiLeaks if it publishes a draft copy of the pact. People could add to the reward fund, or if in a position to do so, make a copy of the draft agreement available to the world.

Our political leaders will say that they are worried about the TPP text getting in the hands of terrorists, but we know the truth: they are afraid of a public debate. So if the free market works, we will get to see the draft of the agreement.

• • By Dean Baker
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Julian Assange condemns WikiLeaks witch-hunt

Assange calls for an end to the 'witch-hunt'

Julian Assange emerges from Ecuador's London embassy to call on the US to end its 'witch-hunt' against WikiLeaks.

WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange has appeared on the balcony of the Ecuadorean embassy to ask US President Barack Obama to make his country "do the right thing" and "renounce its witch-hunt against WikiLeaks".

"The United States must dissolve its FBI investigation," he said. "The United States must vow that it will not seek to prosecute … our staff or our supporters. The US must pledge before the world that it will not pursue journalists for shining a light on the secret crimes of the powerful.

To my family and to my children, who have been denied their father; forgive me. We will be reunited soon. 

"There must be no more foolish talk about prosecution of media organisations, be they WikiLeaks or The New York Times."

"End the witch-hunt" ... WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange makes a statement from the balcony of the Ecuador embassy in London. Photo: Reuters

This was the closest Mr Assange came to asking that the US promise not to seek his extradition should he go to Sweden to face questioning over claims of sexual misconduct. He has not been charged and denies the allegations.

Earlier, one of his spokesmen had said that Mr Assange would consider accepting extradition to Sweden if the US would publicly pledge not to seek his extradition.

Mr Assange and WikiLeaks outraged American authorities with the publication of thousands of confidential diplomatic cables.

WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange gestures after his statement to the media. Photo: AP

The WikiLeaks founder has been sheltering in the Ecuadorean embassy since June because he fears that if the UK sends him to Sweden, the Swedes might hand him over to America and he may face a potential death penalty related to espionage allegations.

Wearing a shirt and tie and sporting a new crew-cut, Mr Assange demanded that the US return to its "revolutionary values" before it lurched over a precipice into which it dragged "all of us": "A dangerous and oppressive world in which journalists fall silent under the threat of prosecution and citizens must whisper in the dark”.

The US “war on whistleblowers” must end, he said, making a forceful call for the release of Bradley Manning, an American soldier detained over espionage claims for allegedly leaking material to WikiLeaks.

To loud cheers from dozens of supporters - held back by more than 40 police - Mr Assange said the United Nations had found that Mr Manning had endured months of "torturous detention" at Quantico and was about to have his 815^th day in jail without trial.

“The regular maximum is 120 days,” Mr Assange said, calling Mr Manning "the world’s foremost political prisoner".

He issued a series of thank yous, including “to the people of the US, the UK, Sweden and Australia who have supported me even when their governments have not”.

He  thanked all the South American nations that have rallied behind Ecuador in outrage over a letter that has been seen as a threat by the British Foreign Office to use police to storm the Ecuadorean embassy to retrieve Assange: “Argentina, Bolivia, Brazil, Mexico, Nicaragua, Peru, Venezuela”.

Mr Assange also thanked supporters who had come out for a vigil in the dark last Wednesday night when police entered the building that houses the embassy.

"Inside this embassy after dark I could hear teams of police swarming up through the building through its internal fire escape". But he said he knew supporters were watching outside.

He finished with,  "To my family and to my children, who have been denied their father; forgive me. We will be reunited soon".

South American nations on Sunday backed Ecuador's decision to grant asylum to Mr Assange, urging dialogue to end the crisis pitting Quito against London.

Foreign ministers of the Union of South American Nations, meeting in Ecuador's biggest city Guayaquil, expressed "solidarity" with Quito and urged the parties "to pursue dialogue in search of a mutually acceptable solution," according to a joint statement.

Karen Kissane, London with AFP  Newscribe : get free news in real time

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Hackers, not all hack for the heck of it! Who are the anonymous hackers? Beware of Seduction!

Tweet

By HARIATI AZIZAN sunday@thestar.com.my

Some do it for fun or fame, others to make a political statement. But a bigger number of hackers are now doing it for money.

THEY brought down the CIA website and attacked Sony, Nintendo and a few tech companies with links to FBI and the US Senate. They wanted to expose the online weaknesses of these entities, “for the Lulz”, they bragged.

But what is grating the American authorities and security experts most about the group who carried out the cyber attacks, Lulz Security, an offshoot of the notorious activist hacker group Anonymous, is that they used basic hacking “tools” available for free online.

One irate network security expert, Paul Ducklin of Sophos, even branded them “a bunch of schoolboys” who did something as intellectually challenging as “boasting in the playground about who's got the hottest imaginary girlfriend”.

 

Beware: A hacker group threatening to attack Malaysian government websites.

It sounds like sour grapes to me, laughs a local IT student and part-time hacker who only wants to be known as “W”.

“This is the democratisation power of technology; it is now easy for anyone to start hacking,” he says.

Technological advancement has inadvertently lowered the bar for hacking, concurs Nigel Tan, the Asia-South principal consultant at online security company Symantec Corporation (Malaysia).

“In the past you have to write the programme yourself. Now there are toolkits available online, and you can create your own malware easily using these toolkits,” he says.

Symantec believes that the availability of these kits are likely responsible for the increase of malicious attacks on the Internet.

As its recent Internet Security Threat Report showed, there were more than 286 million new cyber threats last year, compared with 120 million in 2008.

But you don't really need statistics to show how rampant cyber attacks are growing.

Since last December, the world has been bombarded by a flurry of hacking incidents the highest-profiled possibly being the hacking of PayPal, MasterCard, and Visa by Anonymous in support of WikiLeaks' Julian Assange.

In March, the database of marketing group Epsilon was rampaged and millions of email addresses were stolen. In April and May, Sony's PlayStation network was attacked, more than once, exposing some 77 million users' data.

And in the past three weeks, the security of the International Monetary Fund, CitiBank, the Spanish police, Google, the CIA and our own government websites was breached.

While many of the hackers prefer to remain in the dark corners of the Internet, there seems to be an increase of groups like Lulz and Anonymous who want to grab their 15 minutes of fame for their hacking activities.

New breed

In their claim to fame, Lulz went as far as to open up a hotline to get public suggestions for their next target. The hotline number is said to spell out LULZSEC and callers are reportedly greeted by a male voice heavily tinged with a French accent, which then apologetically explains that “Pierre Dubois and Francois Deluxe” are unavailable because they are “up to mischief on the Internet”.

The group is obviously relishing the limelight, publicly taunting the authorities, not even bothering to hide (or purposely exhibiting) their telephone area code.

Despite their pop cultural references they use the Guy Fawkes masks popularised by the comic book and movie V for Vendetta for their public image Anonymous is less playful.

The “hacktivist” group's activities are self-proclaimed as acts of political activism. In its attack on the Malaysian government websites, for instance, Anonymous announced that it was a protest against the Government's decision to block a few file-sharing websites, which they claim is an infringement of Malaysians' human rights.

The open stance aside, the real identities of these two groups are difficult to detect, as international security personnel who have been tasked to trace them are discovering.

Anonymous, which has been around for almost a decade, for one, is a loose group made up of an indefinite number of members.

As one admirer was quoted: “If you claim you are a member of Anonymous, then you are a member.”

There is a cautionary tale on the web of how one man, HBGary Federal chief executive officer Aaron Barr declared war on Anonymous, only to find himself at their mercy.

In February, Barr had claimed that he had successfully uncovered the real identity of the group's top honchos and announced that he would expose them. Before he knew it, his website was hacked and his database compromised. Important files were deleted while his phone system was crosswired.

Anonymous also took control of the company's email, leaking confidential business emails and dumping thousands of others. The whole attack cost HBGary Federal million-dollar losses and he retracted his claims.

As Anonymous announced later, the company was taken down by five of its members, which included a 16-year-old girl, another slap in Barr's already burning face.

A young Malaysian hacker who only wants to be known as Ahmad shares that many of his peers look up to Anonymous not only because of their political activism but also their technical prowess.

Says the IT student, “It is now easy to hack into different systems, but it is not easy to cover your tracks. Anonymous is master at it.”

Ahmad, however, concedes that he finds it strange that Anonymous has targeted Malaysia. “Sure, they have clearly stated their intentions, but I am still trying to wrap my mind around what it has to do with them. Why is Malaysia important to them?”

W believes that the web may be the final frontier for activism, as promoted by Anonymous and the growing breed of hactivists. “In the last few years, the Internet has been a useful tool for activists to get their message out and to mobilise supporters. Maybe now it is time to carry out their activism campaign in cyberspace itself.”

When asked if he had taken part in the recent Anonymous-initiated cyber attack on Malaysian government websites, Ahmad profusely denies any involvement, but he admits that he and his friend have hacked into other websites before.

“We like to challenge each other, as a test of our IT skills. Many of us do it for fun, just to see if we can get in. We don't steal the data or do any other harm. We have also hacked for classroom lessons' after being assigned tasks of hacking into a few websites to learn about cybersecurity,” he reveals.

For many young hackers, he says, many do it to get noticed by security firms.

“It is still a new area and there are not many professional' hackers those who work with security firms to hack into their systems after they install it to ensure that the systems are really secure. Then there are companies who hire hackers to test the security of new programmes. Our hacking activities are like our auditions or resumes,” he shares.

Symantec's Tan, however, alerts that while these so-called harmless “fun hacking” and hacktivism activities appear to be growing, a bigger number of hackers are doing it for money lots of it.

“I believe that in the last few years, there was a major shift in hacking those who are doing it for fame or fun have decreased. Now hackers are doing it for money. It is big business. Those who are making a big noise are the minorities; more prevalent are those who are involved in the underground economy activities. They are more quiet and targeted in their attacks and would rather keep below the radar so that they can continue their work longer,” he cautions.

Who do the anonymous hackers represent?

THE STAR SAYS

THE flap over the hacker attack of the Malaysian Government's portal has come and gone as swiftly as the click of a mouse.

However, the scale of the problem and the magnitude of the issues around it remain considerable.

To avoid unnecessary confusion, it is important to spell out the issues at stake before dwelling on the justness or otherwise of any particular motive.

In this specific instance, the hackers in the collective international identity of Anonymous had targeted the official websites of a sovereign nation.

Since it was not an attack on a political party or individual personalities but on an entire country's online representation, the hackers are culpable of anything from vandalism to subversion.

The attack was also not against any sinister policy of the Government but rather against its obligated move to block file-sharing websites that allow unlawful downloading of films and music.

Thus Anonymous is merely a group of selfish persons seeking to benefit personally from the work of professional artistes at the latter's expense.

Their motivation was therefore neither just nor defensible.

They are an accessory to illegal and unethical activities, if not also guilty of those activities themselves.

The fact that Malaysia became the first country in the region to block file-sharing websites does not detract from the rights and wrongs of the issues.

A country such as Malaysia has been besieged by various parties clamouring for better enforcement of laws against copyright piracy.

Whatever the record of such enforcement on the street, the clampdown on illegal file-sharing websites is certainly a plus especially when most infringements these days are being committed this way.

At the same time, for a government to resist Internet censorship despite the temptations is definitely commendable.

Attempts to liken Anonymous to Wikileaks are also grossly misplaced.

Wikileaks did not try to deface or destroy websites or to steal official secrets, but only to relay information of public interest to the public domain against the wishes of governments claiming to work for the public.

If hackers had any righteous values or morals, they would have applied their skills to attack websites spewing race hatred and child pornography, among others.

They fact that they do not, and that they have had to remain anonymous, speak volumes about their lack of scruples.

Seduction on the web

LIKE the spider luring the fly into his web, hackers are “seducing” their victims and luring them to their websites.

A major way for cybercriminals to obtain confidential data is by creating fake websites to host malicious software (malware) or to trick you into providing this information (phishing), says Nigel Tan, the Asia-South principal consultant at online security company Symantec Corporation (Malaysia).

Symantec's study shows that spikes in hacking and phishing occur during major events in the world, like the recent British Royal Wedding or the tsunami tragedy in Japan.

Hackers take advantage of these events to get people to click on links to their fake websites so that they can steal people's confidential information.

“It is human nature to get the latest update of an important global event or to see pictures of a tragedy. Hackers exploit this by sending emails with links for pictures or stories on the event or tragedy,” he says.

“When someone clicks on the link, they will be taken to the fake website where their confidentiality will be compromised or their computer may be affected.”

However, it remains a challenge to determine whether a website is genuine or fake other than the obvious spelling and grammatical errors (many fake websites are rush jobs) or shoddy infrastructure and programming.

Worse, sometimes you can go to a trusted website which has links to websites or advertising that may not be genuine and contain malware or phishing mechanisms.

Sometimes, all you have to do is to click the link and you will taken to a website that will affect your computer.

“We call this drive-by download,'” says Tan.

Password

Password is another easy prey for cyber criminals. With many websites out there now requiring users to register, most people are resorting to using personal information like date of birth or address as their password. Worse, people are increasingly using the same password for everything.

“It is understandable that people will not remember if they use different passwords, but the danger of using the same password for everything is that once a website or your email is compromised by a hacker, they will have access to everything else.”

Fortunately, it is not too difficult to strengthen your password, says Tan, advising people to use at least eight letters in a combination of capital letters, small letters, numbers and symbols.

If you use the same password, you can have variations on it by adding different letters or numbers or symbols, the significance of which should only be understood by you.

“Another effective safeguard is to segmentise your passwords by having one set of password for communication, another set for websites and another for banking and shopping online,” he elaborates.

Technology has also enabled hacking activities to be more targeted, so like those living in big houses in affluent areas who are targeted by burglars, those with bigger bank accounts or higher profiles, for instance, will be more susceptible to cyber attacks and need to be more vigilant on the Net.

Botnet alert

Another growing threat is hackers using our identity or computer to launch an attack.

Citing the recent gov.my hacking as an example, Tan says that while an individual may not be a direct focus target of most hackers, they may be a part of the attack without realising it.

The more common modus operandi is for hackers to use our personal information to get access to their target website. A method that is growing rampant is to control our computer to do their dirty work.

Explains Tan: “Now, hackers do not create malware to crash the computer, they want it to be alive. What they do is to plant malware called botnets (which are like sleeper spies) that will stay quietly in the background in your computer until they are activated by the Master to hack into official websites or to send spam emails that will phish information or crash a website.”

For example, if a hacker wants to spam people, they will just activate the malware they have planted in the different computers around the world and something like a pyramid scheme will be at work (the number of spams spread exponentially).

“The computer owner may not be doing anything but his or her computer will be hard at work. This trend is growing, especially now with broadband; so many people are connected 24 hours a day, even when they are asleep,” says Tan.

It is thus vital that people ensure that their computers are well-protected.

“One thing to remember is that although it is getting easier for cyber criminals and hackers to attack us, it is also getting easier for us to protect ourselves. The problem is that people just don't do it,” he notes, adding that it is also important to ensure that your software and programmes are up-to-date as older computers with outdated software are the most prone to attacks.

Ultimately, he stresses, it boils down to common sense.

“Typically, you won't walk into a dark alley or you won't give a stranger your IC number, so you should not do the same on the Net,” says Tan.

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Malaysia Websites hacked but not whacked after threatened; time to build secured websites!

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Warning: The graphic with Anonymous’ threat that was posted online.

Two hackers disrupt 51 Malaysian government Websites, and 40 others

A woman browses the Internet at a cyber cafe in Kuala Lumpur. (File photo)

By LIAU Y-SING AND NILUKSI KOSWANAGE   REUTERS KUALA LUMPUR Thursday, 16 June 2011

Fifty-one Malaysian government Websites were hacked into overnight but no personal or financial data was compromised, government officials said on Thursday, as the nation became the latest target of a cyber-war waged by online activists.

The Southeast Asian country has a vibrant Internet culture that has gained a mass following in an environment where the mainstream media is tightly controlled.

The government has in the past charged bloggers with sedition, often detaining suspects for long periods without trial.

In the attacks, 91 websites were hit including 51 government Websites, the industry regulator, the Malaysian Communications and Multimedia Commission, said on Thursday.

Access to 76 of the 91 Websites attacked since shortly before midnight on Wednesday had been recovered, it said.

The attacks followed a warning by Internet vigilante group Anonymous, which said it would attack the government’s official portal to punish it for censoring WikiLeaks, the Website that aims to expose governments and corporations by leaking secret documents.

“Most government-related Websites are (now) accessible to the public and have either not been affected by the service outages or have recovered from the attacks,” the commission said.

It did not name the sites which were attacked but targets included the government’s online portal http:www.malaysia.gov.my, and the Web pages of the fire and emergency services department www.bomba.gov.my and the land public transport commission www.spad.gov.my.

Malaysian police chief Ismail Omar told Reuters no personal or financial data had so far been stolen but the authorities were trying to determine the extent of the attacks.

It was not immediately clear if the attacks were launched by Anonymous or other hackers.

Anonymous is a grouping of global activists lobbying for Internet freedom who frequently try to shut down the Websites of businesses and other organizations that they oppose.

The activists gained prominence when they temporarily crippled the websites of MasterCard and Paypal that cut off financial services to WikiLeaks.

A spate of cyber attacks on multinational firms and institutions, from the US Central Intelligence Agency to Citigroup to the International Monetary Fund, has raised concerns that governments and the private sector may struggle to defend themselves against hackers.

In an earlier Internet posting, Anonymous said Malaysia’s censorship of films and television shows and its blocking of file-sharing Websites amounted to a denial of human rights.

The communication commission last week banned 10 file-sharing sites and ordered Internet service providers such as Telekom Malaysia and Maxis to block access.

The restrictions have outraged ordinary Malaysians, and several people took to Twitter to express support for the cyber-attacks.

“Now to count how many sites have gotten whacked so far,” said a tweet posted by Rhyden. “I knew the government’s IT defence team was pathetic.”

(Additional reporting by Razak Ahmad; Editing by Nick Macfie)

IT defence team pathetic

The activists gained prominence when they temporarily crippled the websites of MasterCard and Paypal that cut off financial services to WikiLeaks.

A spate of cyber attacks on multinational firms and institutions, from the US Central Intelligence Agency to Citigroup to the International Monetary Fund, has raised concerns that governments and the private sector may struggle to defend themselves against hackers.

In an earlier Internet posting, Anonymous said Malaysia’s censorship of films and television shows and its blocking of file-sharing websites amounted to a denial of human rights.

The communication commission last week banned 10 file-sharing sites and ordered Internet service providers such as Telekom Malaysia and Maxis to block access.

The restrictions have outraged ordinary Malaysians, and several people took to Twitter on Thursday to express support for the cyber attacks.

“Now to count how many sites have gotten whacked so far,” said a tweet posted by Rhyden. “I knew the government’s IT defence team was pathetic.”

The country has a vibrant Internet culture that has gained a mass following in an environment where the mainstream media is tightly controlled. The government has in the past charged bloggers with sedition, often detaining suspects for long periods without trial.

Websites hacked before deadline set by hacker group

Update by By SUBASHINI SELVARATNAM bytz@thestar.com.my, Thu June 16, 2011

PETALING JAYA: Local websites have been hacked ahead of the deadline set by a foreign-based hacker group, Anonymous, that said it would attack the Malaysian Government portal at 3.30am today.

On the micro-blogging site Twitter yesterday evening, there were reports that 27 sites in total had been hacked.

But these were not named and there was no confirmation from the authorities as to the accuracy of the tweets.

Among the sites known to have been hacked was the Sabah Tourism website, www.sabahtourism.com. The defaced site was spotted early yesterday by the chief executive of a company that organises security conferences.

“A portion of the website was deleted when I saw it,” said Dhillon Andrew Kannabhiran, who heads Hack In The Box (M) Sdn Bhd. “I had just returned from an overseas trip.”

The Sabah Tourism website has since gone offline.

F-Secure Corporation (M) Sdn Bhd, a computer security software company, corroborated Dhillon's account. Goh Su Gim, its security adviser for Asia, said the Sabah Tourism site was compromised.

“Worse still, the data from 392 user accounts were stolen from the site and released to the public,” he said.
The data that was posted online were e-mail addresses and passwords.

On the webpage where the hackers posted the data, they claimed they had the details of more than 3,400 users from the Sabah Tourism site, but they were only exposing the 392.

The hackers also claimed to be Anonymous members and that they meant no harm, and only wanted to show the vulnerability of this site.

According to Dhillon, the www.tourmalaysia.com.my site was also hacked and defaced yesterday. He had checked the site after viewing the hacked Sabah Tourism website. It was defaced with words that included “Deface by Kambeng Merah: Credit to DarkJawa.”

Another website hacked was www.cidb.gov.my, which belongs to the Construction Industry Development Board (CIDB).

It was defaced with a long message that scolded the Government for censoring the Internet. However, a while later, the site was back to normal.

Dhillion said he believed these sites may not have been hacked by Anonymous.

“The hacker group is into co-ordinated attacks and keeps to its word when it comes to launching its attacks,” he said. “These are likely independent hackers taking advantage of the publicity.”

CyberSecurity Malaysia, responsible for the nation's borders in cyberspace, confirmed that several websites were hacked. But it declined to say how many and which were the sites.

“At present, we are not able to elaborate further,” said Lt Col (Rtd) Datuk Husin Jazri, chief executive officer of CyberSecurity.

He said rectification works were being conducted by the relevant authorities to address the situation.

Anonymous had threatened to hack the www.malaysia.gov.my portal to protest against the Government's censorship of the Internet and because Malaysia had blocked 10 filesharing sites.

These sites were among the most visited by Malaysians to illegally download movies.

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Foreign-based hacker group plans to strike websites

PETALING JAYA: A hacker group has threatened to attack the www.malaysia.gov.my website.

The group, which calls itself Anonymous, will launch the attack at 3.30am Wednesday and has named it “Operation Malaysia.”

It posted the threat in a graphic on the website i.imgur.com/PTFWh.png Tuesday.

Several local hackers, when contacted said at minimum the government portal would be defaced and at worse it would be brought down.

But they said the worst would be that the hackers pry personal, credit card or financial data from a government website, or an e-payment concessionaire such as MyEG.

Mikko Hypponen, chief research officer at the F-Secure Corporation a computer security software company based in Helsinki, Finland tweeted about the threat at 4.42am Malaysian time yesterday.

Several hours later, Anonymous announced its reasons for wanting to attack the government portal, which were posted in an open letter that started with “Greetings, Malaysia ...” on a website and in a video on YouTube.

It said it was acting against what it claimed were various acts of censorship by the Malaysian Government and also because of the recent move to block file-sharing sites in Malaysia.

Anonymous also accused the Government of censoring films and TV shows, and for restricting the Internet which it said was a basic human right.

“We fear that if you make further decisions to take away human freedom, we are obligated to act fast and have no mercy,” the group said in its statement.

On YouTube, a video featured a digitally-generated voice that read out the group's message.
There had been an uptick in such “hacktivism” in recent weeks, where hacker groups targeted various organisations for political purposes.

Recently, the hacker group launched attacks on Turkish Government websites for alleged Internet censorship. Following that incident, Turkey arrested 32 people, suspected to be Anonymous members.
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Time to build better – and secure – websites

Star Says..........

CYBERSPACE can be a worrisome place for nations and everyone else because there are no physical borders to block. Anywhere really is everywhere in the vast World Wide Web.

A hacker who is physically on the other side of the planet can at the same time be as near as the computer next to you, or even on your own computer, on the Internet.

So it is disconcerting to read about websites, especially those belonging to the Government, being compromised. This just rams the message home – i.e. distance is no safety factor.

It’s even worse to learn about these sites getting hacked almost as soon as they’re launched, like as the 1Malaysia Pengguna Bijak (1MPB) portal was recently. And before that, the portal had gone down just after it went online.

Some of these government websites were easily hacked due to poor construction – such errors being the equivalent of leaving the back door to your home ajar in the real world.

Malaysia has already been plagued by several embarrassing incidents – involving what could be a dearth of construction skills, a widespread tidak apa attitude or, more disappointing, attempts to cheat – where parts of prominent buildings collapsed.

It seems that even in cyberspace, Malaysia cannot get away from such incidents. Case in point: the 1MPB portal going down because it had 3.5 million hits instead of the estimated 300,000 to 400,000 after its launch.

Wouldn’t that be like saying a new bridge collapsed because the construction company thought only 300,000 to 400,000 vehicles would cross it on the first few days, when 3.5 million actually showed up?

Ridiculous, right? Poor planning, too. That excuse would not hold up in the real world, but it seems to be frequently used and accepted by some when it comes to cyberspace matters.

Especially painful is that it cost the taxpayers RM1.4mil to build the 1MPB portal. For that amount of money, we expect an equally huge amount of skilled programming work and very strong network security.

Instead, several vulnerabilities in the coding of the portal were exploited, and the hackers were able to extract usernames, e-mail addresses, encrypted passwords and other information, which could be used for identity-theft activities.

Which brings up the question of how vulnerable the other portals and websites are. What if hackers breach really important sites like that of the Inland Revenue Board? Or that of the Employees Provident Fund? It’s one thing to hack into a site and deface it, quite another if the public loses money or personal data from such attacks.

So, are our portals and websites up to scratch? We are about to find out. And soon, because a hacker group has said that it will hack into malaysia.gov.my, the official portal of the Malaysian Government, at 3.30am tomorrow.

The group, named Anonymous, said it would hack the portal because the telecommunications industry watchdog in Malaysia – the Malaysian Communications and Multimedia Commission – had ordered several file-sharing websites to be blocked by local Internet Service Providers, among other reasons.

If the site does get hacked, we will bounce back. But we hope that it will also result in a wake-up call for Malaysia’s portals and websites that security shouldn’t be taken for granted and has to be built from the ground up.

If there isn’t one, there should be unified strategy and specifications for existing and future government portals and websites, which the developers must adhere to. The owners of these websites must also ensure that all the requirements are met, and that there are regular upgrades and security patches.

Sadly, this initiative will likely come after the disaster. But then again, Malaysia seems able to learn its lessons only after a calamity hits.