Due to a purported outage of the .my domain over this weekend, users of Malaysia’s online banking sites are advised to be cautious with submitting personal information.

A report on Lowyat.net said that DNS servers which handle the .my domain names appear to have gone offline since yesterday and that this affects all .my domain websites.

While some sites are still functional via DNS cached entries, it said these sites with .my domains will become inaccessible once the caches expire.

“Most of Malaysia’s online banking sites are hosted on the .com.my domains, so until this issue is resolved, we advise extreme caution on submitting your credentials to any online services that are hosted on the .com.my and .my domain names,” the report said.

The outage also affects mobile banking apps and several online payment channels, it added.

A DNS (Domain Name System) server translates and resolves easily remembered web addresses into IP addresses for the computer to process.

MYNIC Berhad, the Malaysian registrar of .my domains, has confirmed earlier today in a posting on Twitter that they are experiencing technical issues with the DNS system.

“We feel sorry for any inconvenience to the customers.

“We are working hard to resolve this issue as soon as possible. More details will be issued from time to time,” it said.

Lowyat.net noted that MYNIC has had issues with DNS hacking and DNS poisoning in the past.

“Without detailed information, we cannot ascertain whether this is just a harmless outage of the service, or if it is something more sinister,” the report said. 

Malaysiakini has attempted to contact MYNIC on whether the issue has since been resolved and what caused it in the first place.