The blog of former prime minister Dr Mahathir Mohamad had be taken down by its webmaster when it suffered unknown damage after it was the target of 'server intrusion' by parties unknown.
This was confirmed by the former prime minister's aide Sufi Yusof, who wrote about the matter on Facebook.
"To readers of CheDet's blog, I'm sure you would have noticed that you've not been able to access the blog since before midday today. In fact from 11am, Tuesday Aug 16, the blog has been inaccessible.
"This was due to intrusion of the servers, deliberate or otherwise, forcing the webmaster to 'take down' the blog for rectification works. Currently this is still ongoing," Sufi posted in the message.
While he was not specific about the matter, it can be assumed that the server housing the blog was hacked and the hacker presumably defaced or damaged the infrastructure or data of the site, leading to the webmaster to take the blog offline for "rectification".
Malaysiakini had earlier faced difficulties in accessing Mahathir's blog and as of late last night, chedet.cc is still offline.
"I will try to update once we have significant progress in place. Our apologies for this unexpected situation," said Sufi as access to the blog remains down.
Mahathir began to blog on chedet.cc after the mainstream media ignored him during the reign of former prime minister Abdullah Ahmad Badawi.
He then said that he was "blogging to unblock", as he found all other avenues for him to air his considerable views on national governance stonewalled.
While it is not known if the server intrusion is part of an organised, politically-motivated attack or just the action of a lone hacker or saboteur, for whatever reason, cyber attacks against online sites critical of the government are not that unusual in Malaysia.
Mahathir has not spared any of his world-famous caustic vitriol in his blogging that has of late targeted Prime Minister Najib Abdul Razak and the BN-led government.
Government websites were also once targeted by online dissidents, as well as defaced during a row with a neighbouring country as netizens took sides and took the battle online.
In 2011, several sites, including Malaysiakini were the victims of well-coordinated and highly sophisticated Distributed Denial of Service (DDOS) attacks, which took teams of engineers and network facilities from several hosting solutions providers on two continents to deflect.
