Election Commission Malaysia Website Cyberattack: EC Works With MCMC as Melaka Early Voting Opens

Malaysia's Election Commission (EC) is working with the Malaysian Communications and Multimedia Commission (MCMC) to protect its website after reports of a suspected cyber attack, its chairman Ramlan Harun said on 10 November. He spoke while inspecting early voting for the Melaka state election in Sungai Udang. The EC hasn't said what kind of attack it was, which pages or services were hit, or whether the site went down.

What the chairman said

Bernama reports that the EC first raised the matter in a live social media broadcast, saying the site was "believed to be facing a cyber attack threat", and that it had filed a report with the relevant authorities. Ramlan told reporters he had "yet to receive a full report". On the work with MCMC he told The Star: "We are already working together and taking steps to protect our systems from intrusion."

He added: "Let us all hope that the cyber attack does not affect our website".

A Melaka news site quotes him in Malay saying the attack is believed to have happened early that morning. The Star says the commission promised an official statement "soon"; there wasn't one by the morning of 11 November.

Voting and data

No report links the incident to any disruption of the vote. Lowyat.NET notes it's unknown whether "any systems or data were compromised", and neither MCMC nor the National Cyber Security Agency (NACSA) has commented. Melaka votes on Saturday, 14 November.

Earlier attack reports this month

NACSA raised the national cyber threat level from Low to Medium on 4 November as a precaution. Three days later the National Security Council confirmed disruptions at several financial institutions it did not name, and the communications minister said hackers had defaced a third-party site linked to Bank Rakyat without taking data. Nobody's tied the EC incident to either.