Wednesday February 27, 2013
THE advent of an information age and resurgence of terrorism across the globe has world leaders reshuffling counter-terrorism efforts to match recent threats of “Cyber-terrorism”.Unfortunately, not much is being done in Malaysia despite recent events which have revealed the country’s cyber security vulnerability.
Take for instance the incident early this year where unknown hacker(s) altered the contents of the Information Department’s official website.
This was not the only incident. Two other incidents were reported in 2011, one where a notorious hacker group (Anonymous) took credit for hacking 50 government websites in response to the Government’s efforts to block major online file sharing entity (Pirate Bay) and an open source whistleblower website (Wikileaks), and the other was when a group of unknown hackers (believed to be angered fans) defaced the Malaysian Football Association (FAM) website to show their discontent over the hike in ticket prices.
There was minimal response from the national cyber security agencies in these events and there was no reported apprehension nor were there reports of ongoing investigations.
As these were not catastrophic attacks per se, it is naïve to think that such attacks will not evolve over time.
Such attacks hold specific appeal on a cost benefit analysis and weighs towards maximum amplification of catastrophic damage compared with classical attempts to cause chaos.
With the continuous evolution and sophistication of cyber weaponry, it is worrying to see the future of this country darkened by continuous threats of such incidents.
The National Cyber Security Policy which was reformed in 2006 after a study by the Science, Technology and Innovation Minis-try has been cited as the primary defence against cyber threats in the country.
Even though policy drivers have taken action in enforcing the provisions of each separate thrust, it is still not fulfilling its primary objective, which is to protect Malaysia’s cyber environment from current and imminent threats.
According to MyCERT which is a cyber-response and research centre established by Cyber Security Malay-sia, the number of cyber incidents are continuously rising every year.
The threats are now at an alarming level as significant growth has been observed in both volume and sophistication of cyber attacks, with Distributed Denial of Service (DDoS) and system intrusions appearing more rampant than ever.
This, along with recent implication of terrorist activity concerning Malaysians on national soil and foreign constituencies, will only increase the country’s exposure to such threats.
If matters are to be let loose by authorities at this pivotal moment, continuous reliance on interconnected networks may even lead to the prospect of devastating hybrid attacks which include the combination of both cyber and physical attacks that amplifies damage.
Reference
Ram, R., 2013. Cyber
Terror: Why we should act now. [Online]
Available at: http://thestar.com.my/news/story.asp?file=/2013/2/27/focus/12764835&sec=focus
Available at: http://thestar.com.my/news/story.asp?file=/2013/2/27/focus/12764835&sec=focus
Blogger's Opinion
In my opinion, Malaysia should improve their cyberspace security quickly as possible. This is because we can see that a lot of Malaysian Government portal are being attacked by hackers lately. Malaysia must improve both cyber laws and people with capabilities to overcome cyber terrorism in the government sector. If our government portal were so easily and frequently penetrated by hackers, this will shows that Malaysia cyber defenses system is weak and penetrable. Automatically, this will attract more hackers or terrorist to do more threats on Malaysia. All Malaysian Government secret's can easily be sold to other countries, if the government do not take any action now to improve our security system.
How to improve our cyber security system? The government must take an initiative to encourage more people to join into cyber security especially the younger generations. They can encourage them by giving scholarships for student to enroll in courses that related to cyber security. The government also can hire hackers to work for the government by giving an attractive offer such as full pardon or high income to them. This will increase the number of 'elite soldiers' on the government side. Government also can frequently do 'hacking competition with attractive prizes' in Malaysia. This is to know how does hackers penetrated into the system so more improvement on the system can be done. In this competition, the government can recruit any potential hackers to become the cyber police for the government. We also can collect data of participants for future reviews.
The cyber law itself must be amended and enforced quickly. Amendment on each law must be done frequently coherent with the current technology capabilities. This is because cyber technology are evolving everyday. Government should always spread the cyber law to the public. This will help our cyber security to improve in the future.
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