MH370 investigation documents hacked into:report

About 30 computers of high-ranking officials of government agencies involved in the missing MH370 investigation were hacked and had classified information stolen, TheStar reported in an exclusive report.

Officials in the Department of Civil Aviation, the National Security Council and Malaysia Airlines were among those targeted by the hacker, a source told the paper.

CyberSecurity Malaysia chief executive officer Dr Amirudin Abdul Wahab who confirmed this, said the agency had received reports from the agencies that their network was congested with e-mail going out of their servers.

Upon investigation, CyberSecurity found that the malware (malicious software) was sending the information to an IP address in China. The agency then had blocked the transmissions and shut down the infected machines, the paper said.

“This was well-crafted malware that antivirus programs couldn’t detect. It was a very sophisticated attack,” Amirudin told the paper.

Amirudin said the malware, disguised as a news article reporting that the missing MH370 had been found, was e-mailed to the officials on March 9, a day after the flight disappeared.

“Those e-mail contained confidential data from the officials’ computers, including the minutes of meetings and classified documents. Some of these were related to the MH370 investigation,” he told the paper.

The agency suspected that the MH370 investigation was the reason for the hacking.

Amirudin said the government agencies and the police are working with the Interpol on the hackings.

MAS’s flight MH370 from Kuala Lumpur to Beijing went missing on March 8.