M'sia's Immigration Department website hacked by 'CaptainSmok3r' for 'fun'

No data was compromised, according to the Immigration Department's director-general.

Fiona Tan | April 04, 2023, 09:02 PM

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Malaysia's Immigration Department was hacked on Apr. 4 by a hacker with an unusual name.

This caused a disruption in services that lasted a minimum of 12 hours.

Hacked by CaptainSmok3r

The Immigration Department's director-general Ruslin Jusoh confirmed that the website was hacked in the afternoon on Apr. 4, according to The Star.

A hacker called "CaptainSmok3r" launched a cyberattack, hitting the website earlier at 2am on the same day.

The website went down and was inaccesible shortly after, according to the department's Facebook post at 7:40am announcing that the website is temporarily under maintenance.

However, a search of the website (imi.gov.my) on search engines displayed a result with the title "Hacked by CaptainSmok3r".

Image from @lowyatNET/Twitter.

Hacker did it "just for fun"

The hacker apparently left a message in the search result's snippet, saying that he hacked the website just for fun.

Written in a mixture of English and Persian script, it read: "به سلامتی حکم که یاد داد ، اگه تک باشی از شاه  Stamped by CaptainSmok3r CaptainSmok3r. Thanks for sh..r making this fun بالاتری"

According to Hype My, the Persian script, loosely translates to: "To health, the rule that he taught, if you are single, you are higher than the king."

Website was defaced

Ruslin said no data was leaked during the cyberattack, according to Malaysiakini.

He called the cyberattack a "defacement" as the display image on the website's landing page was replaced by another image.

According to TikTok account @lowyatNET, this was what the website looked like after it was hacked.

Image from @lowyatNET/Twitter.

Ruslin said the hacker could not access the other services on the website such as myImms, SSP among others.

However, the page was shut down to prevent access temporarily.

"The temporary shutdown is to enable all remedial works to be carried out accordingly to the affected site and for us to conduct security configuration of the website," Ruslin said, according to the New Straits Times.

The website remains unaccessible on mobile and desktop as of the time of writing.

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Top image from @lowyatNET/Twitter