(GUARDIAN) ? Google?s Malaysian site has been hacked by a Pakistani group calling itself ?Team Madleets?. The search service was replaced with a splash screen crediting the group before it was taken completely offline.
The group hacked into the Malaysia Network Information Centre (MYNIC), an agency under the Malaysian ministry of communications and multimedia, and conducted a DNS redirect attack altering Google?s Malaysian DNS records to redirect visitors to hacker-controlled servers on Thursday. The site was later taken completely offline.
Google Malaysia has been taken offline following a DNS redirect attack
MYNIC is the sole administrator for web addresses that end with .my in Malaysia.
A statement on the MYNIC site confirmed the attack and that it had been resolved pending propagation across the internet:
We can confirm there was unauthorised redirection of www.google.com.my and www.google.my to another IP address by a group which called themselves TeaM MADLEETS.
The problem was alerted in the early morning and MYNIC Computer Security Incident Response Team (CSIRT) immediately started to resolve the issue. The domain name www.google.com.my has been restored to their correct information at 7.10 am today and www.google.my is still resolving.
DNS records provide a routing lookup for the internet, telling computers where to find servers or other computers. Altering the DNS record can misdirect all the traffic that relies on it. Because changes in DNS records propagate around the internet between servers, their effects can last for days even after the original change has been undone.
Google results showing the DNS redirect attack
A Google Malaysia spokesperson said: ?For a short period, some users visiting google.com.my were redirected to a different website; Google services for the google.com.my domain were not hacked. We?ve been in contact with the organisation responsible for managing this domain name and the issue should be resolved.?
