Cyber hacking not a light matter: DPM Teo

SINGAPORE - THE recent cyber hacking incidents should not be taken lightly as they have caused inconvenience and serious disruptions to services, Deputy Prime Minister Teo Chee Hean said on Sunday.

Mr Teo, who is also the Minister for Home Affairs and Coordinating Minister for National Security, was responding to questions on last Wednesday's cyber attack on 13 websites of schools.

"In many cases, what they do is illegal, and we will take action against them if we can find them and arrest them," said DPM Teo, who was speaking at a community event.

The schools, which included Raffles Girls' School (Secondary), St Andrew's Junior College and Henderson Secondary, had their websites defaced by a person or a group signing off as "Jack Riderr".

On the same day, the Singapore Art Museum said its online mailing list had been breached.

The names, e-mail addresses and, in some instances, nationalities of 4,000 individuals on its online mailing list were illegally published on a New Zealand-based website on Nov 5.

Separately, the Infocomm Development Authority of Singapore (IDA) said on its Facebook page that "a number" of government websites were not accessible from 9.30am to 10.30am yesterday, due to a "power trip at a server".

In the post written at about 3pm on Sunday, it added that power had since been restored and the affected websites were now working.

When contacted, IDA could not provide a list of the websites affected as it was still investigating the incident.

leepearl@sph.com.sg

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