At least five Myanmar government websites have come under cyber-attack by an entity claiming to oppose the country’s “killing” of Muslims.
According to the Information Committee – a branch of Aung San Suu Kyi’s State Counsellor Office – the websites of Myanmar’s Survey Department, Forest Department, Dry Zone Greening Department, Taninthayi Nature Reserve Project, and Clearing House Mechanism were among the websites that were attacked on September 1.
Four days later, the Taninthayi Nature Reserve Project website remains offline, and the home page of the Dry Zone Greening Department website continues to read: “HACKED HACKED STOP KILLING MUSLIMS IN BURMA FUCK MYNAMAR STOP KILLONG MUSIMS HACKED BY PR3D4TOR.”
The entity behind the cyber-attacks claims be responding to Myanmar’s military operations aimed at rooting out ARSA insurgents from Rakhine State. The operations have driven over 100,000 Rohingyas into neighboring Bangladesh and left hundreds dead.
Over 10,000 Buddhist and Hindu residents of Rakhine State have also been evacuated from conflict zones.
According to Eleven, a Myanmar group known as “UG Hackers” has set out to retaliate against the entity known as PR3D4TOR.
The Information Committee has urged the public to report other cyber-attacks to mmCERT – Myanmar’s national computer emergency response team for dealing with cyber-security incidents – or the the Department of National Cyber Security.
According to the latest Security Intelligence Report published by Microsoft, Myanmar is the fourth-most exposed country to malicious software in the Asia-Pacific region. In the first quarter of 2017, Myanmar’s average malware encounter rate was more than double the global average of nine percent.
In February, the website of the state-run Global New Light of Myanmar was hacked by someone claiming to be a Syrian hacker known as RxR Hacker, who has posted messages condemning human rights atrocities in Syria on dozens of websites around the world.
On the Global New Light of Myanmar website, however, the hacker said the infiltration was “just for fun.”
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