Thursday, November 21, 2013

A Real Hack

Personal data of some 4,000 individuals who participated in Singapore Art Museum (SAM) events were heisted from their outsourced website and posted on a New Zealand based storage website on November 5. The news about the data file was disclosed only yesterday, 20 November.

SAM claims it was alerted of the theft by the Infocomm Development Authority (IDA) on the same day, Nov 5. Earlier on Nov 4, IDA had stumbled across a tweet by a "CtrlSalad", boasting of the possession of "3.6k email, numbers, names and IP addresses including the Government's", and sat on it for one full day. SAM's official excuse for its own tardiness in reporting the cybercrime was that they were "estabilishing the extent of the incident". In most probability they were in panic mode, trying to classify it as "technical glitch", "compromise", or "intrusion". Hack was the last word on their minds, and for good reason. A media lawyer at Pinsent Masons said affected individuals may be able to sue on grounds of negligence, with the liability falling on the party controlling access to the data.

In the black week of Nov 5, the mainstream media were in a feeding frenzy, harping on police investigations of three incidents wherein websites were defaced by “The Messiah”, including those of City Harvest Church co-founder Sun Ho, the PAP Community Foundation and the Ang Mo Kio Town Council. IDA blamed outage of Singapore government websites on technical issues, denied hackers were involved. And culminating in the screen capture of the jiak-liao-bee image at the intrusion of the Istana website.

The one time that a spade was called a spade was when the Ministry of Education (MOE) admitted 13 school websites were hacked yesterday. A "Jack Riderr" was fingered as the hacker, as his name was listed in a hackers' database, being associated with a "Johore Hacking Crew". Screenshots of the hacked sites featured a man brandishing a sword, with accompanying words "Muslim Hackers". Some school principals were not even aware their schools' websites were hacked. MOE said they are referring the matter to the Singapore Police Force (SPF), who already have their hands full investigating individuals who responded to the call for "fellow Singaporean brothers and sisters" to dress in black and red on November 5, when Anonymous had planned to make a "virtual protest" on Guy Fawkes day. The foreign hacker will have to wait.
What the Ministry is teaching at our schools

15 comments:

  1. "Some school principals were not even aware their schools' websites were hacked"

    Ah ya, principals "too busy" and important to bother with monitoring their own school's website la, maybe some don't even know how to lock in :). For $200,000 a year, what do you expect man? Even the one paid $2m (before GDP bonus) turned out to be just a tourist permanently on vacation and golf trips, feathering his (and his chidren and in laws') nests while awaiting his national day decoration from the next president.

    You now have incompetence mixed with incentive system that promotes imbeciles. All twiddling thumbs waiting for next promotion and hopefully no scandal, and if there is one, arrow the next chap. red dot is the only place where rotten wood defy physics and float to the top.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. These highly paid ministers and their mandarins are accountable for nothing - none of them are responsible for the breakdown in public transport services, internet outage, investment losses, hacked sites, perpetual flooding, poor regulation of penny and china stocks in the market..... the list goes on and on.

      Yet they have the time to compile a dossier on hawker centre ceiling cleaning to fix the Opposition?

      And they say they are serving us Singaporeans?

      lhl can take back his sampan 2.0, we'd rather sampan 1.0 - cheaper, more accountable, more effective.

      And the whole lot of them should just get off their high horses and learn from Angela Merkel of Germany or John Keys of New Zealand about service to the country.

      Delete
    2. LHL was extolling our system of meritocracy in his speech to schoolgirls at St Nicholas CHIJ. He forgot to add that merit is counted differently for different people who are mere mortals as compared to dignified top dog's wife leading Temasek with unaccounted losses.

      Delete
  2. Does Sin have enough Cyber Police to cope or not?

    More intrusions are sure to happen leh.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Not only intrusions,
      there will be incursions
      and invasions as well.

      Delete
    2. I believe there is a cyber police dept but surveillance of opposition members has greater priority and my instinct says the PAP buggers are involved with the Aussie and US gov in intercepting phone conversations of ASEAN leaders and that of their family members.
      Indonesian leaders who are currently pissed off with the Aussie gov must be pondering on this and it will be interesting to see PM Lee deny any collaboration. LOL

      Delete
  3. // A media lawyer at Pinsent Masons said affected individuals may be able to sue on grounds of negligence, with the liability falling on the party controlling access to the data.//

    He is damn right. Why should all the protection laws go to the State only when the users, being the victim are not provided for? They asked for all your intruding personal data but take no precautions to protect them, who should compensate me if there are identity theft as a result of their negligence?

    ReplyDelete
  4. How many million dollars in salary a year?
    And this is what we get?
    Cartoon characters pretending to be government?

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. (WYSIWYG) WhatYouSowIsWhatYouGet

      Delete
  5. The chicken is already in the cage.

    Kill the chicken, and all the monkeys will be kuai kuai... arbudden..
    gorillas are not monkeys and they are on a different island...
    The one eyed king is king only on one island of the blind.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. If blind, still got hope.
      Stupid on the other hand .... no hope.

      60% stupid is an extremely high number.
      Uniquely Singapore.

      Delete
  6. it is okie to be stupid ... and ignorant...

    But to be repertatively stupid...well...that means truely stupid.

    And we pay really stupid monies on really truely proven to be stupid in charge...zzz

    ReplyDelete
  7. Each time Sin Leaders extoll values and services to the people, ,为国为民, 尽忠尽孝, 取之社会用之社会,
    they gave me lots of goose bumps.
    It is so very UNBELIEVEABLE.
    How can they be so hypocrite and audacious!!!

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. /// How can they be so hypocrite and audacious!!! ///

      Why not?
      60% Sinkies are still cheering them on!
      What more encouragement do you need?

      Girl open legs, you enter or not?

      Delete