A quick visit to Malaysia’s halal website reveals that it has transformed into a gambling site thanks to the work of malicious hackers. Here’s what we know thus far.
Malaysia’s Halal Website Under Siege By Hackers
If you were planning to visit the Malaysian government’s Halal website for reference, chances are that you noticed something is off. For whatever reason, it has turned into a shoddy gambling website of sorts. It’s abundantly clear that the website has been taken over by hackers as a result.
The language used in the hacked landing page suggests that it’s either an Indonesian individual or group being responsible for the attack. There are even buttons to register and contact them, though it simply redirects to an Indonesian gambling website which we can’t identify if it’s also a hacked website or is the hackers’ home base given the URL and landing page mismatch. We’re leaning more towards the former as the domain is seemingly a marketing tool for small businesses belonging to Wildcard UK Limited with an expired SSL certification.
While we couldn’t really find much details about the malicious attack, we did find something interesting. Apparently, Google’s search engine managed to cache the hacked version of the Halal website, in which the search results will show what you see above here. The title now reads “what are the odds of your website being hacked” followed by a seemingly random string of emojis.
At this time, Malaysia’s Halal website is seemingly going down and back up again repeatedly, as a visit will have the “Error 404” message pop up from time to time, suggesting that government officials have become aware and taken action. For now, there has been no official statements yet so we will have to wait and see if anything comes out of it.
Pokdepinion: Looks like our Malaysian government needs to up the security of their online portals. If this one managed to get attacked, I wonder if it’s as easy for all the other portals under them as well. If it is, then it’s time for a cybersecurity overhaul.