Home Deputy Minister Datuk Dr Wan Junaidi Tuanku Jaafar viewed the cyber attack on Sarawak Report as a ‘revenge’ after the politically-motivated blog committed a series of lies and deceits on national governance.

The portal suffered an outage after a Distributed Denial of Service (DDOS) attack for several hours on Tuesday.

Wan Junaidi said that the attack was a form of retaliation after the website had committed legitimate criticism and defamation to the rakyat of the country.

“Good-lah... it (the portal) has committed in too many lies, defamation and slanders,” he said to Astro AWANI here, today.

DDOS Attack
A screen capture of the Sarawak Report website when it suffered an outage on Tuesday. - Screen capture image

Last Friday, The Wall Street Journal published a report claiming that almost US$700 million (RM2.6 billion) of funds from government investment company 1Malaysia Development Berhad (1MDB) had been channelled to personal bank accounts of the prime minister.

On the same day, the Prime Minister's Office dismissed the WSJ report and said it was a 'political sabotage' to topple a democratically-elected prime minister.

1MDB also stated that it had never channeled funds to Prime Minister Datuk Seri Najib Razak.

In the wake of the allegation, many quarters urged the prime minister to sue WSJ to clear his name and set right the image of the country, saying the allegation questioned the dignity of the country's leadership in the eyes of the world.

Two days ago, Najib said he would decide over several days on the form of action to be taken over the allegation.

He said the matter had been referred to his panel of lawyers for advice and the follow-up action that could taken in the country and abroad.

On Tuesday, a multi-agency task force probing the alleged misappropriation of funds from 1MDB says six bank accounts related to the investigation have been frozen.

The joint statement signed by Attorney-General Tan Sri Abdul Gani Patail, Bank Negara Governor Tan Sri Zeti Akhtar Aziz, Inspector-General of Police Tan Sri Khalid Abu Bakar and Malaysian Anti-Corruption Commission Chief, Tan Sri Abu Kassim Mohamed, said the order to freeze the six accounts was issued on July 6.