Online news daily malaysiakini today lodged a police report on the 'denial-of-service' (DOS) attack which prevented readers from accessing the website for two hours on Friday morning.

Lodged by its web programmer Danny Hong at the Jalan Travers police station in Brickfields, Kuala Lumpur, the report said the website's server was hit with a very large number of requests, done to prevent it from being accessed by other legitimate users.

According to Hong, the IP address of the attacker was traced to the Asia Pacific Institute of Information Technology (APIIT) - a top IT school in Kuala Lumpur - which uses Internet service provider MaxisNet service.

IP addresses are identity tags given to Internet user gateways by telecommunication companies such as MaxisNet.

A complaint was immediately lodged with MaxisNet, who was only able to verify malaysiakini's claims after two hours. As a temporary measure, MaxisNet cut off the school's Internet link.

"IP registration records show that the IP block between 202.75.157.128 to 202.75.157.159 belonged to an Amirul Nizar Ahmad Nuruddin located at the Subang Hi-Tech Industrial Estate Park in Shah Alam.

"Attempts were made to contact him numerous times, but failed," said Hong in his report.

The action by the hacker was very "unfortunate", he said, as not only did it disrupt the work in the editorial room, but also affects malaysiakini's credibility as one of the fastest news providers.

School to investigate

On Friday, APIIT systems engineer Michael Low told malaysiakini that their system could have been hacked to conduct the attack.

The heavy traffic flow in the college's servers made tracing the culprit difficult, he said, as hackers normally use high-traffic volume to cover their tracks.

However, Low promised that it would aggressively trace the culprit and inform malaysiakini if there was any information.

Friday's event was not the first time that the online media organisation had encountered such attacks.

Hong said similar attacks usually occur during important news events.

In earlier attacks, malaysiakini had been successful in nabbing one of the culprits three years ago.

The student hacker, who was traced all the way to University of British Columbia in Canada, was eventually punished by the authorities.

For the upcoming general election, malaysiakini will have a series of mirror sites put up to counter any technical difficulties during the crucial period.