SINGAPORE — Another two Singaporean men have been charged under the Computer Misuse and Cybersecurity Act for unauthorised intrusions and compromising the website of the Prime Minister’s Office (PMO), as well as the online accounts of three individuals.

The duo, Mohammad Azhar Tahir, 27, and Mohammad Asyiq Tahir, 21, are brothers. They face a total of 16 counts under the Act between them. This comes one week after two other men, businessman Delson Moo and student Melvin Teo, were charged for hacking into the Istana website.

Mohammad Asyiq faces six charges for unauthorised access to an individual’s wireless network, hacking the email and Twitter accounts of Ah Boys to Men actor Ridhwan Azman and the Facebook account of another individual between Nov 4 and 5. He was also charged for uploading a video onto Mr Ridhwan’s YouTube account of a man wearing a Guy Fawkes mask claiming to be from the international hacker collective Anonymous.

His brother, Mohammad Azhar, was charged for 10 counts of making unauthorised modifications to the contents of the PMO website, accessing the Internet through an individual’s wireless network without authorisation and changing the passwords of Mr Ridhwan’s online and social media accounts, among others, early last month.

On Nov 8, he injected a crafted script into the search function of the PMO website, impairing the normal function of the server and causing it to generate and communicate instructions to display specified text and images, such as an image of a mask. For this act alone, Mohammad Azhar could be jailed for up to three years or fined up to S$10,000 or both.

The brothers, who stood in the dock in court one after the other, appeared solemn as the charges were read out to them yesterday. Their passports have been impounded and both are out on S$10,000 bail each.

Deputy Public Prosecutor Christine Liu requested for a four-week adjournment for the case to be mentioned as investigations are “still pending”. The cases will be mentioned on Jan 6.

Moo, 42, and Institute of Technical Education student Teo, 21, were also charged last week under the Act for allegedly hacking into the Istana website on Nov 8.

James Raj Arokiasamy, 35, who went by the moniker The Messiah was charged on Nov 12 for allegedly hacking into the Ang Mo Kio Town Council’s website and faces four other drug charges. He is currently in remand and has been denied bail.

It was revealed on Thursday that some 650 files containing confidential data of private clients of the Standard Chartered Private Bank were also found in James Raj’s laptop during police investigations.