The revelations about the US government’s top secret phone and Internet surveillance programmes last week have put cybersecurity under scrutiny worldwide.
The Malaysian government, however, has said that it does not engage in any kind of hacking or ‘spy’ work on its people or on other countries.
According to Communications and Multimedia Minister Datuk Seri Ahmad Shabery Cheek, the government does not condone such actions.
He told Astro AWANI: “Yes we are not [spying]. I’m not saying Malaysian [citizens themselves are not doing it] but as far as the government is concerned, we are not condoning it, and we are not doing it,”
“But there are hackers everywhere, they might hack your account,” he said, adding that his own Facebook and twitter accounts has been hacked before.
“Hacking is already considered a game by certain quarters, or even part of warfare,” he said, citing the example of the ‘hongke’ union in China where volunteers there attack the US cyberspace for the government.
“Every country Iran and India has a cyber army. There are so many things going on out there in cyberspace. People are testing your fortress every now and then. Everybody must keep themselves safe,” he said.
Shabery also revealed that the Malaysian government websites are being attacked “almost every second, every minute”.
“...by malware, spyware, worms, viruses from outside. It can be from America, it can be from Russia, or Siberia. They are attacking us every now and then,”
Shabery said that to monitoring and defending against these attacks is “the core business” of the Malaysian Communications and Multimedia Commission(MCMC).
“People might misunderstand the role of MCMC. They thought that SKMM is monitoring political matters within the country. But the biggest task for SKMM is doing right now is protecting or keeping the health of our cyberspace. We are trying our best,” he said.
Shabery advised Malaysians to ‘take care of their own private information’. “Like for example, you have Facebook and email accounts, you have to change your passwords from time to time.
Asked how could normal people defend themselves against expert hackers, Shabery said that that is why education was paramount.
“That’s why we have to be educated. I mean, in the US they even have a hacking competition, even to penetrate the Pentagon, for instance, for the purpose of education.”
Shabery said the Malaysia will even consider doing such events. “Well,we [can] do that. Because at the end of the day, some of the hackers they are brilliant people. Their energy should be channeled for good things. To create a better system, a better apps and so on.”
Last week, The Guardian broke the story in which 29-year-old former CIA technical assistant Edward Snowden exposed the US government’s expansive data-collection efforts through its National Security Agency(NSA).
The information included a secret court order directing Verizon Communications Inc to turn over all its calling records for a three-month period, and details about an NSA programme code-named PRISM, which collected emails, chat logs and other types of data from Internet companies. These allegedly big tech companies such as Google Inc, Facebook Inc, Microsoft Corp, Yahoo Inc, AOL Inc and Apple Inc.
Teoh El Sen
Sat Jun 15 2013
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