Rafizi hits out at online forum for claiming Padu hacked

Economy minister Rafizi Ramli previously said the team that developed Padu had placed great emphasis on ensuring its data security.

PETALING JAYA: Economy minister Rafizi Ramli has criticised online forum Lowyat.net for “happily spreading misinformation” after it claimed that the central database hub (Padu) was hacked.

Earlier today, Lowyat.net reported that Padu and the national population and family development board (LPPKN), an agency under the women, family and community development ministry, had been hacked by a group known as R00TK1T.

The online forum said the hackers claimed to have “stolen data from Padu”. It also alleged that the group had breached LPPKN’s security infrastructure and stole more than 27GB worth of data from its servers.

Lowyat.net later clarified that the Padu database which R00TK1T had purportedly hacked referred to LPPKN’s management and service delivery unit.

“Thanks Lowyat.net for not fact checking first that Padu is a sub-unit of LPPKN,” said Rafizi in a post on X.

“The least you could (have done) is to message Padu (on X) to confirm (the allegation) before happily spreading misinformation.”

Padu was launched on Jan 2 with the aim of ensuring the efficient delivery of targeted subsidies.

Rafizi previously said the team that developed the system had looked at data security, including user experience, from every angle while developing Padu.

Meanwhile, a women, family and community development ministry spokesman told FMT the ministry is looking into R00TK1T’s claim that it had breached LPPKN’s security network and stolen data.

Earlier this month, R00TK1T claimed that it had accessed Maxis’s data, prompting the company to initiate an investigation into the alleged security breach.

Maxis said that while it did not identify any issues related to its own systems, it had come across a “suspected incident involving unauthorised access” to one of its third-party vendor systems.

The telecommunications service provider said the system “resides outside of Maxis’s internal network environment”.