The Straits Times responds to hacking threats

Earlier today morning, The Straits Times website was hacked by the group, Anonymous Collective, for an article written by correspondent Irene Tham. Tham had reported on the Singapore government receiving a threat via YouTube.The video was a warning by an anonymous group that threatened to bring down key infrastructures in Singapore in an attempt to show of protest against the state's new licensing rules imposed on websites.The speech was given by an individual in a Guy Fawkes mask and the male encrypted voice in the video said: “The primary objective of our invasion was to protest the implementation of the internet licensing framework by giving you a sneak peak of the state of your cyberspace if the ridiculous, communistic, oppressive and offensive framework gets implemented.”In her article, Tham had allegedly modified a sentence in the speech "war against the Singapore Government" into "war against Singapore".The "Messiah" from Anonymous Collective, who had written in response to the article demanded an apology along with several other demands. The Messiah also clarified that the group was a “decentralised non-violent resistance movement, which seeks to restore the rule of law and fight back against the organised criminal class” and “opposed any form of internet censorship among other things.”When asked what SPH’s next move would be an SPH spokesperson, in a statement said:“A section of the Straits Times website was hacked into earlier this morning. We have taken down the affected blogs. We have made a police report, and the police are investigating.”She added that more details will soon be available on straitstimes.comYesterday, The Straits Times had reported that IDA was aware of the video and that the police were investigating the situation.While the original video has been removed from YouTube, copies have been circulating in the cyber space since.The video also urged Singaporeans to join its protest by dressing in black and red on 5 November and blacking out their Facebook profile pictures for the day.Under the new framework proposed by the government,  websites must remove stories which MDA deems as a guideline breach within 24 hours and also pay a licensing fee.