So, in the end, it was an internal problem that caused the alarming shutdown of 19 Singapore government websites on Saturday.
A combination of routing and hardware issues during a maintenance effort was the reason, the Infocomm Development Authority (IDA) said yesterday. It disputed claims that a hacker had broken in after threats of such a cyber attack last week.
There’s also the question of whether IDA had called reporters in for a briefing only after the document was leaked to the public, via a report on the Tech In Asia site.
That’s an important point because it may show how reactive – rather than pro-active – that government agencies are with sharing information that is important to the public. Unfortunately, that question doesn’t seem to have been put to the IDA yesterday. Full story
