[governance] Malaysia elections and the Internet

[parminder]

http://www.reuters.com/article/2013/05/04/uk-malaysia-election-online-idUKBRE94309G20130504


  In Malaysia, online election battles take a nasty turn

(Reuters) - Ahead of Malaysia's elections on Sunday, independent online 
media say they are being targeted in Internet attacks which filter 
content and throttle access to websites, threatening to deprive voters 
of their main source of independent reporting.

Independent online news sites have emerged in recent years to challenge 
the dominance of mostly government-linked traditional media. The 
government denies any attempts to hobble access to the Internet in the 
run-up to a close-fought election.

"During the 2008 election we were wiped off the Internet," said Premesh 
Chandran, CEO of independent online news provider Malaysiakini.

"Our concern is that we'll see a repeat of that on May 5. Can we really 
live without independent media on election night, given that both sides 
might not accept the result?"

Malaysiakini was set up in the late 1990s to test the government's push 
to lure technology companies to the country by promising not to censor 
the Internet. Other news websites have followed, including The Malaysian 
Insider, which set up shop down the street from Malaysiakini in 2008.

Such websites have emerged as an important source of news to counter the 
traditional media, most of which are owned by interests linked to the 
ruling Barisan Nasional or BN coalition.

The BN's dominance of media is one of its crucial advantages as it fends 
off an increasingly potent opposition that made impressive election 
gains in 2008. Sunday's election is expected to be the closest yet, 
though Malaysian Prime Minister Najib Razak is favoured to win.

Leading opposition politicians who attract big campaign crowds in cities 
say they get a much cooler reception in rural areas, where access to the 
Internet is rarer.

Malaysia ranked 145th on a list of 179 countries in this year's World 
Press Freedom report released by Reporters Without Borders. It was 
Malaysia's lowest ever ranking.

A survey released on Friday by the University of Nottingham's Malaysia 
campus and Malaysia's Centre for Independent Journalism found that 
online media gave almost equal coverage to the opposition and government 
parties, while traditional media focused on the ruling BN coalition and 
its parties "by a significant margin".

POLICE RAIDS TO ONLINE ATTACKS

Malaysiakini, the most popular of such websites, has weathered several 
storms, including police raids, denied access to press conferences, 
accusations of being linked to foreign agents and requests to take down 
content, Chandran said.

But in recent years the tactics appear to have shifted towards knocking 
the site offline, primarily through distributed denial of service, or 
DDOS, attacks, where servers are deluged by thousands of requests at the 
same time.

Harlan Mandel, CEO of New York-based Media Development Investment Fund, 
which has worked with Malaysiakini for more than a decade and is a 
minority investor, said in an email interview that Malaysiakini had 
become a focus for attack after "establishing itself as the go-to site 
for reliable election reporting for millions of Malaysians" in 2008.

"Since then, it has come under repeated cyber attacks, generally 
coinciding with sensitive political events like local elections and 
political rallies, said Mandel.

Malaysiakini is not alone. Last month a DDOS attack brought down three 
related London-based radio web portals, according to Clare Rewcastle 
Brown, their Malaysian-born founder.

Jahabar Sadiq, CEO of Kuala Lumpur-based The Malaysian Insider, said his 
news service had come under heavy DDOS attack shortly after six of his 
staff were summoned to the regulator, the Malaysian Communications and 
Multimedia Commission or MCMC, a few weeks ago. They were asked, among 
other questions, for technical details about their service provider.

"It can't be a coincidence," he said in an interview. "They were asking 
questions about our architecture which weren't required."

BACKUP U.S. SERVERS

At least half a dozen news or political websites have now shifted their 
servers to U.S.-based CloudFlare, which offers protection against DDOS 
attacks for a fraction of the cost other companies charge. CloudFlare 
said that attacks on such sites had increased in the past week, mostly 
from Malaysia-based computers 
<http://www.reuters.com/sectors/industries/overview?industryCode=104&lc=int_mb_1001> 
or IP addresses it had not previously seen involved in attacks.

Now, Malaysiakini's Chandran and others say, their attackers appear to 
have shifted gear again.

The Malaysian Insider's mail service, which allows users to email 
articles to others, was hacked two weeks ago, Sadiq said, triggering it 
to queue tens of thousands of emails to send to users within a couple of 
hours.

Malaysiakini's Chandran says the most recent wave of disruptions began 
late last month when users complained the site could only be accessed 
intermittently. One minute users could access the site, the next they 
couldn't.

They figured out that only those using Internet service providers who 
channel their traffic through state-controlled Telekom Malaysia Berhad 
were affected, while those accessing through smaller ISPs who use an 
international gateway were still able to access the site.

"It's a smarter way to do it," said Chandran. "It's a guerrilla style in 
that it creeps up on you and it's harder to detect."

Shortly after complaining informally to the MCMC, Chandran said, the 
attack stopped.

Since then, Malaysiakini discovered that some political sensitive videos 
it had posted on YouTube could not be viewed if accessed from some local 
ISPs and some Facebook 
<http://www.reuters.com/subjects/facebook?lc=int_mb_1001> pages 
featuring election-related content were also affected.

Such tactics appear to be using what is called deep packet inspection, 
where Internet traffic is monitored and filtered via specific keywords, 
links or digital signatures, which would require access to the ISP.

INVESTIGATION LAUNCHED

The MCMC said on Thursday that it was investigating such complaints but 
that "preliminary investigations indicate that there were no such 
restrictions by ISPs as alleged by certain quarters".

Telekom Malaysia said in a written response to questions from Reuters 
that it had set up a taskforce and network operating centre to ensure 
that its network ran smoothly for its customers during the election period.

"Malaysia has a free, open and robust online media environment. The 
government does not censor the internet and welcomes constructive 
criticism as part of the democratic process," said a government 
spokesman told Reuters.

"We deny any involvement in cyber-attacks. The government does not 
condone attacks against the media in any form."

Indeed, Malaysiakini's Chandran and others are careful not to accuse the 
government or Telekom Malaysia directly.

"We are an Internet-based company, we don't want to pick a fight with a 
telco, we need them," Chandran said. "Besides we can't tell whether 
they're doing it on purpose."

It's almost impossible to figure out who is behind the attacks and not 
easy to distinguish between a deliberate assault and the technical 
issues of handling large and fluctuating waves of traffic. Independent 
security experts said the available evidence appeared to confirm 
Malaysiakini's conclusions.

Dhillon Andrew Kannabhiran, Malaysian founder and CEO of the Hack In The 
Box conferences, said that "stuff is being filtered or slowed down or 
otherwise being messed around with for sure" on Telekom Malaysia's 
network, but he said that it could have been done without the company's 
say-so or knowledge.

In the meantime, websites are preparing for the worst by mirroring 
content on other domain names and on Facebook 
<http://www.reuters.com/subjects/facebook?lc=int_mb_1001>. The Malaysian 
Insider has also set up a mirror outside the country at 
themalaysianoutsider.com.

Whatever the outcome of Sunday's election, Malaysia's increasingly 
sophisticated Internet battleground reflects the future of struggles to 
control and influence of information.

The election-related DDOS attacks in Malaysia "follows a trend we've 
seen elsewhere where DDOS is becoming a part of many elections", said 
Matthew Prince, co-founder CEO of CloudFlare.

Malaysia illustrated how political parties and the powers-that-be are 
starting to use the Internet, said Mikko Hipponen, chief research 
officer of Helsinki-based internet security company F-Secure which has 
large lab in Kuala Lumpur.

"They are taking a much more active role and, in some parts of the 
world, they are not afraid to use the more offensive technologies to get 
what they want," said Hipponen.

"I believe we'll be seeing much more of this."


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