No effort will be spared to track down Anonymous: PM

SINGAPORE — The authorities will “spare no effort to try and track down” the person or group who had threatened — behind the veil of anonymity — to launch a cyber-attack on the Government’s IT infrastructure, Prime Minister Lee Hsien Loong said yesterday.

And if the culprits are successfully hunted down, they will be brought to justice and “dealt with severely”, Mr Lee said, adding that such a threat “is not a laughing matter”.

“It’s not just anything goes and you’re anonymous, therefore, there’s no responsibility. You may think you’re anonymous — we will make the extra effort to find out who you are,” he said.

Speaking to reporters on the sidelines of a counter-terrorism exercise involving 20 agencies, Mr Lee — making the first comments by a minister on the threat — added that the authorities have begun tracking down the perpetrators and that the Government has taken steps to “harden our system so it is not so vulnerable”.

The Government takes the threat “very seriously because our IT network, the Internet (and) our communications have become an essential part of our business and our lives now”. Mr Lee said: “If your network is down, you can’t connect, you can’t work, you can’t keep in touch with what’s happening in the world, with what’s happening whether it’s in your business, your family or in Singapore.”

Last Tuesday, a video was posted on YouTube that purportedly showed an anonymous hacker group threatening to attack infrastructure in Singapore because of discontent over the new licensing scheme for online news sites. The group claimed to be part of international hacker collective Anonymous. The person behind the hacking of several websites in Singapore, The Messiah, is also said to be part of Anonymous.

The police are investigating the YouTube video, as well as the hacking of The Straits Times website last Friday, for which The Messiah had claimed responsibility.

Information security expert Anthony Lim said the culprits can be tracked down, although it would require time and resources. Mr Lim, a member of the Application Security Advisory Board, explained that the authorities can flush out hackers by following digital trails, which “must come from a particular source”. He added that the Government has ample resources to do so and could tap the cooperation of foreign agencies if necessary.

The Republic’s robust response to national security threats was underlined yesterday at the culmination of a two-week counter-terrorism exercise, which was witnessed by Mr Lee and several other ministers, as well as senior officials from various ministries.

Exercise Highcrest was conducted to validate the full operational capability of the National Maritime Security System and involved 1,600 personnel from national agencies, including the Singapore Armed Forces, the Singapore Police Force, the Singapore Civil Defence Force and the Immigration & Checkpoints Authority. The exercise involved a hijacked ferry and hostage rescue, among several other scenarios.

It was the first simulated exercise where land and sea security agencies shared information and coordinated operational responses to a terrorist attack, beginning from when a threat is first identified.

Mr Lee said: “What we’ve been working on is the whole security system — that means the command and control, getting the intelligence, tracking the ships which are coming through the Straits of Singapore ... finding out which ones are suspicious, investigating them, making sure that nothing is amiss ... that is something which goes on day after day, 24 hours a day, quietly — without Singaporeans realising it.”