The official websites of the Maldivian president’s office, the foreign ministry and the tourism ministry were restored in the early hours of Sunday (Jan 7) after being down since last night in a suspected cyberattack.
The president’s office had taken to its social media handles to report the unexpected disruption to the official websites. It informed that the National Centre for Information Technology and other relevant entities were actively working to resolve the issue.
On Saturday night, these websites experienced an outage for several hours, rendering them unreachable due to an unexpected technical issue, suspected to be a cyber attack.
The Maldives President’s Office addressed the matter on X, saying, “Please note that the President’s Office website is currently facing an unexpected technical disruption.
The National Centre for Information Technology (NCIT) and other relevant entities are actively working on resolving this promptly. We apologise for any inconvenience caused and appreciate your understanding and patience.”
The heated spat between Maldivian and Indian users on X escalated when Maldivian government officials started sharing derogatory remarks against the Indian Prime Minister and Lakshadweep. For example, Mariyam Shiuna, a Deputy Minister at the Maldives Ministry of Youth and Empowerment, called PM Modi “a puppet” and a “clown”.
The Maldives media suspects it to be due to a massive cyber attack on the island nation, with things getting to normal.
An Indian hacker group known as ‘Indian cyber force’ claimed to have taken responsibility for the attack. Plus Maldives being one of the tourist destination, many 5 star hotel property operating in the Island nation, their websites were hacked for many hours’ possible cyber attack .The Maldivian govt. has restricted access from Indian IP addresses.
(Image Courtesy: www.cybermaterial.medium.com)
