“The cyber attack was aimed at disabling the entire Sosco infrastructure that is used for daily operations but the success of Socso’s IT unit in regaining control of the system eventually caused the hackers to change their tactics, by attempting to smear the agency’s image,” Socso said.

Socso said that all payments of benefits, compensation and disability pension to the contributors and next-of-kin will still be carried out according to the stipulated period.

On the data that was leaked on the dark web, Socso said preliminary investigation found that the data stolen by hackers were incomplete and expired.

“This cyber attack against Socso is not the first time, but rather a series of intrusions, with the last one occurring in September, which was successfully contained,” it said, adding that the forensic results would be shared with the authorities to prevent a repeat of such incidents.

Human resources minister V Sivakumar said the ministry will also intensify mitigation measures by seeking the cooperation of agencies and authorities from relevant ministries.

Earlier today, communications and digital minister Fahmi Fadzil said that CyberSecurity Malaysia, the National Cyber Security Agency, and the Department of Personal Data Protection will investigate the cyber attack on the Socso website.