The official Jabatan Kemajuan Islam Malaysia (JAKIM) Sabah website appears to have been compromised in an apparent cyberattack, with its homepage replaced by a message claiming responsibility under the “Anonymous” banner. At the time of writing, the website is no longer accessible, while JAKIM has yet to publicly acknowledge the incident.
The defacement message described the attack as a protest against Malaysia’s age verification and online safety measures, claiming they pose a threat to user privacy. It also referenced similar actions previously associated with Anonymous during protests against the Stop Online Piracy Act (SOPA) in the United States in 2012.
More notably, the attackers claimed to have downloaded the email addresses of the website’s administrators, superusers, and moderators. The message threatened to publish the alleged data on dark web forums unless Malaysia amends its online safety code within two weeks to include what it described as more privacy-preserving age verification methods.
The message also contained a lengthy political statement filled with unverified claims and accusations, alongside links to external websites. As such, the authenticity of the attackers’ claims, including the alleged theft of administrator email addresses, could not be independently verified.
Although the website is currently offline, archived snapshots of the defaced homepage remain accessible through the Internet Archive’s Wayback Machine. Based on our checks, the incident appears to be limited to the JAKIM Sabah website. JAKIM’s main website, as well as other websites hosted under the islam.gov.my domain, remain accessible and do not appear to have been affected at the time of writing.
It is also worth noting that the attribution to “Anonymous” is based solely on the message displayed on the compromised website. Given that Anonymous is a decentralised banner rather than a formal organisation, there is currently no independent verification of who was responsible for the attack.
We have reached out to JAKIM for comment regarding the incident but have yet to receive a response. We will update this story if the agency issues an official statement.
