Why Was Lee Hsien Loong, Singapore Prime Minister, Targeted In Anonymous Attack #OpSingapore?
Days after Anonymous led its Million Mask March global protest, the hacktivist collective launched yet another cyberattack, this time on the website of Singapore’s Prime Minister Lee Hsien Loong.
The nebulous band of activist hackers targeted the prime minister after he pledged to track down members of the group on Wednesday, promising that the government would “spare no effort” to identify and punish the responsible parties. According to the Wall Street Journal, Lee’s remarks were made in response to threats from Anonymous.
“When somebody threatens to do harm to [Singapore's information infrastructure], we take that very seriously and we will spare no effort to try and track down the culprits,” Lee told reporters during an exercise on counterterrorism. “If we can find him, we will bring him to justice and he will be dealt with severely.”
“You may think you’re anonymous -- we will make the extra effort to find out who you are,” he added. Lee was also quoted as telling Singapore newspaper Today that the country’s “IT network, the Internet, our communications have become an essential part of our business and our lives now.”
According to the Daily Dot, the Southeast Asian country has earmarked $104 million for security updates. Lee’s comments provoked a quick response from Anonymous, who defaced a section of the Singapore government’s website on Thursday. The hacked website featured an illustration of the Guy Fawkes mask and a mocking headline that read: “It’s great to be Singaporean today.”
Another message from the group read: “ANONYMOUS SG WAS HERE BIATCH.”
The defaced comments were taken down quickly and the site’s operations were otherwise normal, Raw Story reported.
Singapore’s Infocomm Development Authority addressed the incident on Friday, saying that “a subpage on the PMO website was reported to be compromised” Thursday night and “vulnerability in that subpage was exploited to display pages from other sources. This vulnerability is known as cross-site scripting.”
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