14 DAY TRIAL // A hacker going by the online handle Messiah faces a total of 162 charges, most of them for unauthorized computer-related activity.
On Monday, the hacker, James Raj Arokiasamy by his name, received an additional 105 charges to the 57 he had already been accused of at a previous court hearing.
Among others, he is accused of gaining unauthorized access to the servers of Fuji Xerox, as well as of accessing the Ang Mo Kio Town Council website and defacing it.
The police found on the hacker’s laptop a set of 647 bank statements from private banking clients of Standard Chartered Bank; these were stolen “through a server of Fuji Xerox,” according to The Strait Times news publication.
Apart from this, Arokiasamy has allegedly spent time preparing an operation that led to penetrating the systems of People's Action Party Community Foundation (PCF).
In the most recent blast of accusations, he is blamed for breaking into the computer systems of The Straits Times news publication by stealing the credentials of reporter Irene Tham.
Apparently, the hacker was discontent with a news piece of the reporter, who decided to post some criticism at a video published by Arokiasamy. The clip contained disdainful remarks and messages against the Singapore government, which the hacker thought the reporter had deliberately misinterpreted.
As a result, the defendant defaced Tham’s blog hosted on The Straits Times systems and left some clarifications, urging the reporter to apologize for the lies she published or resign.
Out of the 162 counts, it seems that four are drug-related accusations, although there is no information on these.
36-year-old James Raj Arokiasamy is accused of committing the offenses between March and November 2013, when he was apprehended by the authorities. He has been denied bail, and a pre-trial has been arranged for Wednesday, August 27.
On Tuesday, new cyber-security measures have been announced by the Singapore Information Minister, Yaacob Ibrahim.
Upgrading cyber defenses is expected to last until January 2015 and should allow officials to track malicious activities on government websites, as well as prevent data breach events.
These actions are not necessarily taken as a result of Arokiasamy’s intrusion into various computer systems, although these are definitely taken into consideration, but in order to prevent security incidents such as the one that affected US retailer Target at the end of last year.
“Governments, businesses, manufacturers and consumers must guard against data leakage, unauthorised access to corporate resources and malware attack against their networks,” said the minister at a conference in Singapore.