Hacktivist attacks on S'pore sites surge in Q4

THE spate of hacktivist attacks on Singapore government and media sites late last year were significant enough to cause a spike in Akamai's quarterly Internet intrusion records for the Asia-Pacific region.

The Internet network services firm noted that much of the growth in attacks detected in the region in the fourth quarter of last year was due to attacks on Singapore sites after the government enacted a licensing requirement for media sites.

Sites belonging to the public sector showed a jump in attacks in Akamai's tracker; as a result, the number of DDoS (distributed denial-of-service) attacks within the region nearly doubled from the previous quarter, from 71 attacks to 138 attacks.