An attempt to rig and distort malaysiakini's poll has been traced to the Physics Department of the University of British Colombia (UBC) in Vancouver, Canada.

A computer in that department has been running a code which automatically casts as many as 10 votes a second for the "Don't know" option in the current malaysiakini poll on whether the rotating chief ministership in Sabah would be retained.

"The perpetrator is running a script which consistently connects to the poll and submits the third option. This may be a holdover from the earlier MCA poll where the same third option showed an unusual increase of votes," said Internet security expert Dinesh Nair.

Malaysiakini's previous poll titled "Who can lead MCA best?" registered unrealistic results pointing to the fact the survey was manipulated by certain parties ([#1]M'kini poll on MCA abused by 'interested parties'[/#], Feb 22).

"The attack against the malaysiakini poll is of the 'denial of service' type," said Nair.

Not due to 'hacking'

Malaysiakini chief executive officer Premesh Chandran said that such spam could lead to a website being inaccessible to readers.

"The attack was targeted at our poll in order to disrupt the results," he said.

"This form of attack is very hard to avoid because it does not require any 'hacking' ability. We have stopped the attack for now and will be upgrading our poll technology to overcome the problem from recurring," he added

Chandran said that malaysiakini has written to the university authorities in UBC requesting that action be taken against the culprit and to shut down the computer in question.

"We have deleted the problem poll and a new poll with the same question is now in operation," he said.

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