[governance] Malaysia elections and the Internet

[Adam Peake]

Malaysiakini have been subject to attacks for many years, participated
in WSIS from early prepcoms.

<http://groups.yahoo.com/group/Babel/message/2067>

Adam


On Sun, May 5, 2013 at 1:18 PM, parminder <parminder at itforchange.net> wrote:
>
>
> 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 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 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. 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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