Caught in political cyber war

Had problem getting into MT yesterday and was not aware that it was MT that was being attacked, thus affecting its visitors.

It started when I clicked on a heading, with being asked if I wished to open, with a warning about unsafe file. I chose Word and all I got was some programmer-type text.

Later, what I got was an old Oct 27 copy of MT headlines which I could click to read.

This morning, I tried searching for MT, instead of using the bookmark, and managed to open the latest published headlines with the following complaint from Raja Petra himself:

02/11: We survived, yet again
Category: General
Posted by: Raja Petra
37 Comments
NO HOLDS BARRED

Raja Petra Kamarudin

Last night, at around 10.00pm, I started receiving messages that Malaysia Today was down. I called up the server chaps and told them to see what the problem was and by the time I reached home soon after midnight I discovered, to my horror, that all our data had been totally wiped out.

Sigh.....yes.....Malaysia Today suffered yet another attack. I must take my hat off to those Umno chaps whoever they are. In spite of spending thousands to beef up our security they still managed to break in and mess up our server. I was devastated. Even the backup files had disappeared. I normally backup the entire site every week or so, sometimes twice a week, but when I finally managed to get into the server I found that there were no longer any backup files. The last time I checked there were about 20 or so but now they were all gone.

It had been a long day and I was dog tired. I did not fancy going through the whole process of rebuilding the entire website. It would have been impossible to do so. There were probably 30,000 news items, articles, reports, etc., accumulated over more than three years and it would have been humanly impossible to rebuild the site. I would not know where to find all those pieces again. My first reaction was to throw in the towel, close shop for good, and go get a good night’s sleep.

I called up one chap who happened to be online and discussed the matter with him. He asked me whether I had downloaded any backup files onto my hard disk and I remembered doing so last Saturday. It would mean I would lose all those files uploaded since Saturday, but losing five days’ work is not as bad as losing what to me was a lifetime’s work, though three and a half year is not quite a lifetime -- it just felt like a lifetime.

Okay, so all hope is not lost. I would lose all the data from Sunday to Thursday but 99% of it could still be saved. This chap then helped me restore the data from my hard disk and by around 2.00am we were done, thank God. Then the worst of our fears happened, as much as we hoped it would not. The restoration was not successful. To make matters worse, we were now locked out of the server because we had wiped out some files that allow us access into the Blogs.

Shit! Now what? Okay, my friend told me, calm down, we can still beat this. We will have to start back from scratch and rebuild all the Blogs. What? That’s crazy. The last time it took a whole week. Nope, we will do it in one night, my friend assured me. So we started the slow and painful process of rebuilding the Blogs and by dawn we had practically set up all the Blogs again. Then, hell, all the Blogs disappeared. The files just vanished.

Fuck, I had been awake almost 24 hours and I was pissed. This was no longer funny. What in heaven’s name did they plant in our server? It was eating up all our files. These attacks have been very frequent of late but this one was the worst because they erased all our three years of very valuable data. I initially took the matter in my stride when they first contacted me around 10.00pm because they have been constantly trying to take us down the last many months but at most all they could do was put us temporarily out of action for two to six hours. The heaviest attack was about two weeks ago when they attacked us five days straight and in the first two days we were down for about six to seven hours each time. But this attack shook me up and sent me into a panic.

Well, I have been sitting in front of my computer the last 24 hours and have not slept for almost 42 hours and I am certainly in a most foul mood. No, let me rephrase that: I am in a fucking foul mood and would not hesitate to punch anyone who rubs me the wrong way. Anyway, the site is now up and running again though with some loss of data. I have two days of sleep to catch up on. And if any Umno mother-fucker attacks this site again, I am going to punch the first Umno chap I see right between the eyes.

Okay, I am now going off to nurse a bloody throbbing headache. And hey, don’t give me any lip, okay? I am just not in the mood. Good night. I wish I could say the same for myself though.

(Kosong's Collateral damage: My pc's AVG anti-virus program managed to track the following viruses:
Nl214w1m.exe Trojanhorse Generic8.TLA
Rgz5xhgz.exe Trojanhorse Generic8.TLA)