Google Malaysia was hacked in the wee hours today and visitors were taken to a defaced landing page.
In what seems to be case of DNS hijacking, hackers hijacked the Google Malaysia page and redirected the visitors of Google Malaysia’s website to black page proclaiming that it has been “hacked!.”
The defaced page put up by the hackers stated that Google Malaysia had been hacked by a“Bangladeshi hacker” calling himself “Tiger-M@te”. The hackers gave no reason for the hacking.
Though Google Malaysia appears to have restored control of the website now, the defaced page continues to appear intermittently according to local Malaysian users.
Google representative said that it was likely a case of a domain name system (DNS) attack. Google Malaysia’s corporate and communications chief Zeffri Yusof said the website has not been compromised, and the incident was likely a repeat of the DNS attack that had occurred at least twice before. Back in October, 2013, a Pakistani hacker group called MadLeets 1337 had similarly hijacked Google Malaysia and led users to a different landing page.
“I do not think it is hack, it is more likely to be DNS redirection. This happened, if you remember, back in 2011 and 2013. So, it is quite a regular occurrence,” Zeffri said. Zeffri said that the matter is under investigation and they are waiting for a report from the domain registrar, MyNIC Berhard, “However, I may want to clarify with MyNIC Berhad, our domain registrar.”
MyNIC Berhard has not given any comments on the hacking of Google Malaysia.
Google used Twitter to warn Malaysian hackers of the redirection and asked them to visit Google.com/ncr in the meantime till the issue is resolved.
“Getting reports from users experiencing google.com.my DNS redirection. Please use google.com/ncr in the meantime,” Google Malaysia posted on Twitter.
The defaced page can be viewed on Zone-H, an archive of defaced websites, According to Zone-H TiGER-M@TE also defaced yahoo.com.my, translate.google.com.my and youtube.my today, however this was not independently confirmed.
https://twitter.com/NadzmiSakarnor/status/587863980179193856
