By Sreejit Pillai
Thursday, August 10 2000 06:16 PM
URL: http://www.zdnetasia.com/news/hardware/0,39042972,13029096,00.htm

KUALA LUMPUR--Popular Internet news and commentary site Malaysiakini.com's mirror site was hacked into last night and the Web site is still not online at press time.

Malaysiakini business manager Premesh Chandran told Malaysia.CNET.com that they received an email this morning informing them of the mischievous deed.

However, the main site Malaysiakini.com is unaffected and can be accessed.

"Our readers from overseas alerted us about it. It must have happened last night after we went home," he said.

Premesh said the hacker or hackers had changed the frontpage of the mirror site, Malaysiakini.com.my.

According to the online newspaper's report today, someone identified as "The Immoral Xeno's" defaced the site with a message: "Do we need a morale (sic) code? No, we don't".

Premesh said TMNet, the Web host, was working to restore services but due to unforeseen circumstances, its Web hosting service was down for most of today, hampering efforts to get the mirror site online again.

"We are not blaming anyone for this incident. But we will be reviewing our security features after this incident," he added.

Malaysiakini is fast becoming the alternative news medium for many urban, middle-class Malaysians who would like another news channel besides the ubiquitous pro-government mainstream media.