Following the recent warning by the Prime Minister on hackers known as “Anonymous” that threatened to compromise the national IT infrastructure last week, the Prime Minister’s Office and Istana websites were hacked into at 11.17pm (7 Nov) and 12.20am (8 Nov) respectively.
According to IDA, the websites are compromised due to a vulnerability known as Cross Site Scripting (XSS) and injection attacks. For those who don’t know, XSS allow hackers to inject scripts into the main pages to compromise it.
Both the Istana and PMO’s websites are undergoing maintenance and patching, said the IDA, “We will continue to strengthen all Government websites. This includes the checking and fixing of vulnerabilities and software patching. While this is in progress, visitors to Government websites may experience intermittent problems with access. This will be completed as soon as possible,”
IDA has also announced “Both the PMO and Istana main websites are still working, and we will restore the compromised pages as soon as possible. The matter is under investigation,”.
At the time of writing, the Istana’s main page seems to be up, but their search page was taken down in light of it being the source of the attack, same goes for PMO’s website.
Istana Website – www.istana.gov.sg
Prime Minister’s Office Website – www.pmo.gov.sg
(source)