[ UPDATE 02/02/2024 17:42 ] AI Untuk Rakyat is now online again, according to MyDigital. However, the agency didn’t provide further explanation regarding the cyberattack experienced by the portal.
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The AI Untuk Rakyat self-learning portal has been taken offline until further notice. Based on the official announcement by MyDigital which is the government agency that is responsible for the program, it seemed the portal may have suffered a cyberattack.
AI Untuk Rakyat portal experienced a sudden influx of user registration
According to the brief announcement on MyDigital’s Facebook page and X, the AI Untuk Rakyat portal has experienced an unusual amount of user registration. Hence, its operation is being suspended temporarily for the platform supplier to perform a cybersecurity review on the portal.
At the moment, this is how the site looks like:
For those who are wondering what is Firebase which was shown on the error message, it is the backend cloud computing and web application platform by Google. Since there was a lack of a proper AI Untuk Rakyat-themed error message, it is possible that the site was taken down in haste to stop what we believe is a registration flooding attack.
The brief announcement by MyDigital also did not mention when the portal will be up again though.
Is this an attack by the R00TK1T ISC Cyber Team?
The attack on the AI Untuk Rakyat portal happened at a rather interesting time. There have been several high-profile cybersecurity incidents involving Malaysia as of late including the open threat made by the international hacker group R00TK1T ISC Cyber Team.
However, the group has yet to make any claims in regards to the attack on the portal. Furthermore, registration flooding attacks happen quite often and it seems like something that is slightly lowkey for a complex hacker group such as R00TK1T.
