Sarawak Report forced to go on the run after cyber attack

Far from being cowed, the website reveals further misdoings of Taib Mahmud.

KUCHING: It is not safe in cyberspace. For the last three days, anti-Taib website Sarawak Report had been attacked so relentlessly that it has been forced to keep changing addresses.
Sarawak Report founder Clare Rewcastle Brown  said: “We have sustained three days of unremitting cyber-attacks and we are  accepting that Sarawak Report will have to go on the run for the next few days until the election.

“Our web experts say it is a Distributed Denial of Service Attack (DDOS), the same form of attack that brought down WikiLeaks. They use robots to shoot bits of software to flood the server,” Brown said in an e-mail to FMT today.

After delivering indepth revelations on Chief Minister Taib Mahmud and his family’s extensive business empire and unexplainable wealth, Sarawak Report  is now playing a hide-and-seek game hoping to hold out until the  election on April 16.

Over the past weeks, Brown has been uploading wide-ranging reports on Taib’s business records in Sarawak and abroad along with documented evidence of massive land grabs by him and his family.

“We have some great stories, which clearly our persecutors would rather we did not get out,” she said.  She added that Sarawak Report is now available at this alternate site.

Yesterday, Brown complained that her site has been experiencing interrruptions over the past week “which culminated in concerted attack on Sunday in the UK and then going fullblown and global overnight”.

She blamed Barisan Nasional (BN) for the attacks on her site, adding that it was clear now that “BN does not find itself in a position to answer our findings and arguments”.

Not to be outdown, Brown published yet another revealing report on Taib’s foreign bomoh Stella. Stella, according to Brown, was related to Taib’s brother-in-law Australian Lebanese Robert Geneid.

Stella had also allegedly picked Taib’s young wife Ragat, who is Geneid’s cousin from a series of three photos of potential brides.

Stella had apparently caused a sensation when she appeared during the nomination process on April 6, said Brown.

Brown claimed that  Taib’s closest relatives had sent her “a dossier of intimate revelations” making it clear that that they want people to know about Taib’s failing condition.

“Above all, they (the family) say they are putting their country before their family interests in attempting to warn voters against allowing Taib and his relations to carry on.”
Sarawak goes to polls on April 16. There are 213 candidates contesting in 71 constituencies in the state.

Taib’s Balingian seat itself will see a three-cornered fight. Taking him on is his cousin Salleh Jafaruddin, an independent endorsed by Movement of Change Sarawak (MoCS) and PKR’s Suriati Abdullah.