Cyber-brawl
In a ‘smart’ city  
Pray that this mini digital war will not set the precedent for a national trend in this tech-savvy country. By Seah Chiang Nee.
Jan 16, 2010.

AT A time when the government wants to take on its online critics, two of Singapore’s most popular and outspoken websites have come under cyber attacks.

In the latest case last week, The Online Citizen (TOC), which regularly criticises government policies, said it had become a victim of a denial of service assault.

It posted a brief announcement on its main page on Wednesday. “Hi everyone, we’ve been under a DDoS (denial of service) attack in the last few days which incapacitated our website. We apologise if you had difficulty in accessing TOC.”

It appealed for patience as it worked on the problem.

This was the second major website to be hit after Temasek Review (TR), a hard-hitting critic of the ruling People’s Action Party (PAP), was shut down for 24 hours last September.

For three months, the assaults on it continued intermittently until it strengthened its defences.

It said these “well coordinated simultaneous attacks” on the two sites were an attempt to disrupt their smooth operations and affect plans for expansion.

The Review has grown rapidly in the past two years with readership rising 50% to six million hits.

A DDoS attack involves overwhelming a target site with thousands of connections per second, rendering it inaccessible.

In some countries, the warfare is more sophisticated and often launched, or encouraged by, a government agency against a foreign foe.

The apparent offensive here against the two rising web stars – at least in the eyes of its fans – could be a danger for this smart island, which largely depends on the Internet to earn a living.

“If we resort to a culture of web warfare to shut out rivals, Singapore will pay the price,” said a software engineer.

“You can’t win because somebody else will hit back.”

This is one of the few cities that is fully wired up for fast broadband access that is used by a tech-savvy population for study, commerce and networking.

But it also poses a huge challenge to the ruling People’s party’s firm control on the media.

Some two-thirds of Singaporeans in their 20s either blog or participate in online forums.

The attacks followed a condemnation of the new media as “adversarial” and “one-sided” by Acting Information, Communication and the Arts Minister Lui Tuck Yew.

At the moment, the websites’ reach lags far behind that of the mainstream newspapers.

The predators who hit The Online Citizen and Temasek Review have never been identified.

There is no evidence that the PAP is behind the attack and it has not commented on them.

But given the rising online threat to it and the PAP’s intention to fight back, some suspicion has fallen on political supporters, possibly in the party’s youth wing.

“Mark my words, this is just the dry run for the next election, when the Internet will hot up,” said a surfer.

“I wouldn’t be surprised if both websites are knocked out (again) then.”

It’s a fight the PAP cannot afford to lose. Taming its online foes and winning over the new generation of Singaporeans are crucial to it staying in office.

It was only a year ago that Prime Minister Lee Hsien Loong took his party’s first major step to join the new media war by evolving itself to deal with it.

He said in a TV interview: “We are still learning. It is not easy to make this transition. It is like going from sea to land or vice versa, you are changing your medium and you need to get comfortable with it. But we are working hard at it.”

Many of the older leaders know little about it.

A 50-member new media team has been set up to do the work.

One of the tactics was to place people into some of the anti-government forums to engage the critics.

“If we see things that are not correct on websites which are respectable and reliable, then we have to be there to put across our point of view so people will be able to know the facts and to respond to it,” Lee explained.

High-tech war worsens

Ironically, this story coincided with two headlines abroad.

First, Google announced it might pull out of China because of a sophisticated computer network attack originating there that targeted its e-mail service and corporate infrastructure.

“A primary goal of the attackers was accessing the Gmail accounts of Chinese human rights activists,” it said.

At least 20 other large companies, including finance, media and chemical firms, had been targets of similar attacks.

In the second story, the Iranian Cyber Army paralysed China’s biggest search engine, Baidu, allegedly over support given by some Chinese surfers to Iranian reformists.

The Chinese retaliated.

Singapore is watching with some concern in case of worldwide spillover.

Although the incidence in Singapore is small in comparison, some business people are concerned that it may set a precedent for a future in which digital warfare becomes a national habit.

They believe that the Internet works on trust and reliability and if these are compromised, people may want to go back to the slow paper-shuffling ways.

That would be a disaster for this business hub.

Meanwhile, the PAP is still on the lookout for young Members of Parliament who are of the Internet generation.

“(They should) be quite naturally comfortable with it and with the population who are also operating there,” PM Lee said.

That will come naturally anyway.

The hope is that they – and opposition groups – will fight with superior logic, rather than use high technology to silence each other.

(This was first published in The Star on Jan 16, 2010).