Singapore Straits Times said no classified military information were stored on I-net which was breached.

Mindef said at a media briefing: “The real purpose may have been to gain access to official secrets, but this was prevented by the physical separation of I-net from our internal systems.”

Security experts told the newspaper the attack could have been state-sponsored.

Aloysius Cheang, executive vice-president of global computing security association Cloud Security Alliance, said: “It is common for states to sponsor such attacks to access other countries’ infrastructure, and build a portfolio of information that can be used to their advantage.”

Mindef said the 850 personnel’s identity card numbers, telephone numbers and birth dates were lost in the cyber attack.

Mindef’s deputy secretary of technology David Koh said this could not be the work of casual hackers or criminal gangs.

Koh said the hacker exploited vulnerabilities in the server and these had since been plugged.

Classified and military data, and internal emails, reside in a different system not connected to the Internet.

Mindef is contacting all affected personnel and advising them to change their passwords and report any unusual activity related to the use of their personal information.

tags: Singapre, defence, Mindef, breach, cyber attack, servicemen, details, stolen, FMT, KL Malaysia,