Hacker raids in Singapore vandalize possibly more than 180 sites

The sites were defaced during two separate sprees this week.

The most recent event, which occurred at 11 a.m. on 2/19, affected more than 80 websites, according to SingCERT, a cybersecurity organization started by government agency IDA. Some of those sites belong to the Reform Party, an opposition political group in Singapore.

The RP alleged on Facebook that hackers inserted a webpage on the group’s site with an image of a marred Singapore flag. The word ‘looser’ was written across it. The perpetrators claimed to be from Anonymous Indonesia.

RP officials made the following statement:

The manner in which the website was attacked with our Singapore flag defaced and an 'Indonesian group' taking credit was designed to get the government to act and take us out of circulation. We are not so easily intimidated.

The government ordered the party to take the site down. It was still offline as of 12:30 a.m. on 2/20.

SingCERT officials said that no government websites were affected.

An earlier onslaught might have affected at least 103 websites, according to Zone-H.org, which archives online defacements. A group called Lopht Crews was apparently responsible.

Such intrusions typically are orchestrated in one of two ways: SQL injection, a technique for gaining administrative access to a website by manipulating its database -- or cribbing the username and password to the server’s File Transfer Protocol.

The Register has additional details on these incidents here.

ThreatWatch is a regularly updated catalog of data breaches successfully striking every sector of the globe, as reported by journalists, researchers and the victims themselves.