Anonymous may be behind hack of Singapore paper’s website

1 Nov 2013

Individuals appear as Anonymous, wearing Guy Fawkes masks. Image via Wikimedia Commons

An individual claiming to be part of hacking collective Anonymous said he or she hacked the website of Singapore’s main paper, The Straits Times, because of a ‘misleading’ report.

Just days ago, a hacker claiming to be a member of Anonymous posted a video online, with a threat to hit out at Singapore’s infrastructure. The video also protested the country’s new licensing regulations for news websites.

A comment on a section of the Straits Times website alleged the Straits Times reporter who blogged about the video “chose to conveniently modify the sentence ‘war against the Singapore government’ into ‘war against Singapore’,” BBC News reported.

“That in our opinion can be very misleading,” the hacker posted.

“ST: You just got hacked for misleading the people!”

The post added “the media has also misled our intentions by stating that we had plans to attack the infrastructure of Singapore on the 5th of November”.

“That is ONLY our intention if the internet framework gets implemented. Not otherwise,” it said.

Singapore Press Holdings, the company the runs the Straits Times, said in a statement it had taken down the affected blog from its site and also filed a report with police.

The Singapore government’s IT Security Incident Response Team has also alerted all government agencies after the video went up on YouTube on Tuesday.

Tina Costanza was a journalist and sub-editor at Silicon Republic

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