Some 50 Malaysian government websites were crippled on Wednesday night after a hacker attack by the Anonymous Hactivist group, renowned for its retaliation attacks on companies hindering the work of Wikileaks, local media sources said on Thursday.
The attacks, which began at around 3 a.m. local time (19.30 GMT June 15,) hindered the work of 41 of the targeted websites. Anonymous issued a warning to the Malaysian government ahead of the attack in which it threatened punishment for censoring the Internet.
"Monitors of the situation showed a reduced level of hacker activity by 4 a.m. this morning," the Malaysian Communications and Multimedia Commission (MCMC) said. "So far we have seen little impact on Malaysian Internet users."
MCMC did not specify which websites were hacked, only saying its own site was targeted but that the attempt was unsuccessful.
Malaysia is the latest target in a cyber-war waged by the activists, who gained prominence when they temporarily crippled the websites of MasterCard and Paypal that cut off financial services to WikiLeaks.
Spanish police said on June 11 that they had arrested three people belonging to the Anonymous group. They were accused of organizing cyber-attacks against websites belonging to the Sony electronics group and government and bank websites.
