The Domestic Trade, Cooperatives and Consumer Affairs Ministry has admitted that the RM1.4 million 1pengguna.com website had been hit by a security breach, but no user information was missing.

NONE“It happened on June 9 when we were making some changes to cope with large the number of hits.

“In the process, some test data was hacked. But so far there has been no report of any missing information,” said the ministry's deputy chief secretary Mahani Tan Abdullah in a phone text message to Malaysiakini.

According to a report by popular IT online forum Lowyat.net early this morning, a hacker group called Rilekscrew found several vulnerabilities on the 1pengguna.com which “allowed almost all the data contained on the server to be remotely accessed”.

NONEThis data contains user sign-up details, user names, email addresses and passwords involving 2,000 registered users, according to the report written by Lowyat.net founder and chief executive Vijandrean Ramadass.

"We immediately dispatched an email to the contact email listed with a brief explanation of the vulnerabilities, but two days later we noticed that nothing had been done to secure the servers," said  Vijandren.

Earlier today, attempts were made to obtain a response from both the ministry and the portal administrators, but to no avail.

A spokesperson for Sands Consulting Sdn Bhd who declined to be named said it was not in a position to comment and directed queries to be made to the government.

Its minister Ismail Sabri told Malaysiakini through a phone text message that he was unaware of the matter.

Ismail then suggested this reporter to seek further information from Mahani, who responded through phone text message at around 10pm.

She added that the ministry had taken steps to rectify the matter.

“We assure all users that we will continue to monitor and take measures to prevent such security breaches.”

Ismail launched 1pengguna.com on Tuesday as part of a move to tackle profiteering by listing the prices of products sold at hypermarkets, supermarkets, wet markets and convenience stores.

The portal includes a chat box where users can interact directly with Ismail for one-hour every Wednesday.

Was stress test performed?

Unfortunately for Ismail, the first chat session ended on an embarrassing note as many participants grilled him on the need to spend RM1.4 million on a simple website.

Others pointed out that the website was slow, amateurish and not user-friendly.

At one point, Ismail lost his cool and challenged critics to lodge a report with the Malaysia Anti-Corruption Commission (MACC).

Yesterday he made public several document to prove that Sands Consulting was selected through open tender.

Ismail claims that the website was only prepared to deal with about 300,000 to 400,000 hits, was not ready for the 3.5 million hits it has received since the launch crippled the site temporarily.

However, this explanation was dismissed by Vijandren.

"We really don't want to throw numbers about but 3.5 million hits is not a huge number and some basic stress testing prior to launch would have ensured the site remained operational."