MyCERT Reports 50% Rise in Hacking Activities in April
11th May 2001 (The Star)

PETALING JAYA, Thurs:The number of computer intrusions last month has increased by 50 % compared to March, the Malaysian Computer Emergency Response Team (MyCert) said today.

Its project manager, Raja Azrina Raja Othman, said for the past four months, MyCert recorded 88 incidents involving host compromise and of this, 90% involved webpage defacement.

"There are various factors contributing to this, primarily buacause there are more exploit information available on the internet and easier-to-use tools, enabling more malicious users to use them for personal gain," Raja Azrina said.

She also said malicious users group together to create their own community and coach newcomers.

From her observation, the recent US-China strained relation contributed to an escalation of hacking activities between the two groups of antiUS and anti-China.

She said previous examples of hacking activities were on issues between Israel and Palestine and hackers vs multinational companies.

"Some of these mass server compromises were not necessarily country specific," she said, when asked to comment on the possibility of a cyber war against Asia.

Raja Azrina said MyCert will not single out the government in the issue of lacking in security systems since it is prevalent in all organisations connected to Internet.

However, she added, the government may want to focus on recurring incidents and analyse the reasons for the recurrence.

Asked if all parties concerned have taken sufficient steps to minimise computer security threats, she said it can be further improved.

"Administratiors are still taking a lackadaisical approach to security, thinking that firewall and some black box solution will solve the problem," she said.

She disclosed that many of the compromised hosts involved networks with firewalls in place.