14 DAY TRIAL // A 28-year-old man ran a cross-site scripting (XSS) attack on the Singapore Prime Minister’s Office web page, placing messages that attributed the incident to Anonymous hacker group.
Mohammad Azhar Tahir injected code in a Google search bar available on the website in order to generate a different result than what would normally be obtained through a regular search. The link of the modified search query was distributed online, and anyone clicking it would be taken to a page depicting an individual wearing a Guy Fawkes mask and referencing Anonymous group in a message.
No breach actually occurred
The incident took place in November last year, a week after the Singapore Prime Minister issued a warning about Anonymous targeting the country’s computer networks.
According to Straits Times, Tahir also hijacked the Internet connection of a neighbor to hack the social media profile and email account of actor Muhammad Ridhwan Azman. He then used the celebrity’s popularity to distribute the custom search links.
As expected, seeing the content loaded after clicking on the official link, most people believed that someone managed to hack the website of the Prime Minister Lee Hsien Loong and alter it in a defacement attack; this could not be further from the truth, though. Only the search query had been manipulated to load a different result.
Multiple computer offenses amount to six months of jail
It appears that Tahir’s example was picked up by others too, as the same type of action affected the Istana website. Istana, translated to “palace” from Malay, is the official residence of the President of Singapore. In this case, one of the intruders received a fine of SGD 43,000 / USD 34,000 / EUR 26,400.
Tahir, on the other hand, seems to have gotten away with just a slap on the wrist, as he was sentenced on Monday to two months in prison for tampering with the search function on the Prime Minister’s website.
However, he also received an additional four months of jail time for the other illegal computer activities, scoring a total of half a year in the can. On the other hand, the maximum jail penalty he faced was of up to three years.
The Singaporean publication also says that Tahir compromised the social account of actor Muhammad Ridhwan Azman in order to teach him a lesson, as the celebrity apparently had an online dispute with the perp’s younger brother; the latter was also tried for computer offenses, but received 18 months of probation for pleading guilty to five out of 11 charges.
