The prime minister says they will do everything in their power to track down the culprits

Nov 7, 2013 08:48 GMT  ·  By

Anonymous hackers are threatening the Singapore government, particularly the Infocomm Development Authority (IDA), for the implementation of the internet licensing framework. The country’s Prime Minister Lee Hsien Loong says these threats are taken seriously.

A few days ago, after Anonymous started making threats and hacked the website of the Straits Times newspaper, IDA noted that the government started preparing for hacktivist attacks. Several official websites have since been taken offline for maintenance.

In a statement provided to the press a few hours ago, at Exercise Highcrest 2013, Lee highlighted the fact that the government’s IT networks and the Internet were crucial for businesses and regular users. That’s why the official says the threats are taken seriously.

“When somebody threatens to do harm to it, we take that very seriously and we will spare no effort to try and track down the culprits and if we can find him, we will bring him to justice and he will be dealt with severely,” the prime minister said, cited by Today, a local daily newspaper.

It’s worth noting that no major Singapore websites were targeted on November 5, the day on which Anonymous members from all over the world marched in protest.

Of course, this doesn’t necessarily mean that they’ve given up on their operation against the Singapore government.

So far, only the website of the Straits Times has been targeted. The newspaper became a target after one of its editors published a piece about the Anonymous threats. The hackers were displeased with the fact that the article said the campaign was aimed at Singapore and not the Singapore government.

“We demand you reconsider the regulations of your framework or we will be forced to go to war with you. For every single time you deprive a citizen his right to information, we will cost you financial loss by aggressive cyber intrusion. An intrusion your $130 million cyber security will not be able to stop,” Anonymous said in a statement published a few days ago.