Hacker threatens to leak ‘incriminating evidence’ against Kong Hee

SINGAPORE — Two days after the official website of singer and City Harvest Church (CHC) co-founder Ho Yeow Sun was vandalised, the hacker was back in action, this time with a threat to leak “incriminating evidence” against her husband, pastor Kong Hee.

In a sinister-toned message, posted on a website registered in Spain, the hacker said he had considered releasing the personal data of over 5,000 users registered on Ms Ho’s website yesterday, but decided against it for the time being.

“ ... We think that it might be a bit rash to do it now ... but when forced, we will have no problems doing so,” said the man, who identified himself as “The Messiah aka Ub3r Pr3ach3r” and claimed to be a member of Anonymous, a loose hackers’ collective.

Six church leaders, including CHC founder Kong, are facing corruption charges in an ongoing criminal trial, for allegedly misappropriating S$24 million of church funds via sham bonds issued by two companies and for allegedly misappropriating a further S$26.6 million to cover up the first amount.

The money was allegedly spent on Ms Ho’s music career in the United States.

“The Messiah” said he decided to hack her website as “she was the international representative for CHC”.

On Monday morning, a message on her hacked website accused the singer, popularly known as Sun Ho, of having a “hidden agenda”. It ended with the warning: “You do not want to displease me any further.”

In a statement on his website that night, Kong expressed concern that the hacker’s statements appeared “to have been intended to cause readers to influence and pre-judge the issues in the criminal proceedings”. He also filed a police report.

When contacted yesterday, the CHC declined to comment further, saying that the matter had already been referred to the police.

Lawyers told TODAY that the church would face an uphill task in taking action against the hacker, even though a person who commits an offence under the Computer Misuse Act overseas may be dealt with as if the offence had been committed in Singapore.

While the police would have powers to investigate, “the issue of jurisdiction is always a very challenging issue in Computer Misuse Act cases”, said Mr Foo Cheow Ming, a criminal defence lawyer, who has dealt with local hacking cases.

“The critical question is: Where is the evidence? Very professional or high-tech hackers hide behind many layers. They can remotely control one computer in another country and do another thing to another computer in another country … how do you penetrate all those layers?” he added.

As for a civil recourse, litigation lawyer Gloria James, who has also handled hacking cases, said while the church could send a letter of demand to the holder of the IP address, “it’s not going to be easy”.

“How are they going to get the information?” she said, noting that going after the owner of a website would be tougher than getting the details of a forum administrator.