Maldives

Summary

A cyber attack targeted multiple Maldivian government websites, including the President's Office, Foreign Ministry, Tourism Ministry, and Juvenile Court, causing extended outages. Hackers identifying as "Bharatiya hackers" from TeaM NETWORK9 claimed responsibility, citing offensive remarks by government officials as motivation and warning of further cyber impacts unless provocations ceased. The attackers promoted hashtags related to Indian islands while authorities initially attributed the disruptions to technical issues before restoring services.

Motives

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TTPs

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Description

On January 7, 2024, multiple official Maldivian government websites—including those of the President’s Office, Foreign Ministry, and Tourism Ministry—experienced extended outages. Authorities initially attributed the disruption to “unexpected technical issues,” with the President’s Office publicly acknowledging the problem on social media platform X. The National Center for Information Technology (NCIT) and other entities worked to restore access, and the sites were reportedly back online later that day. No explicit mention of a cyberattack was made in official communications at this stage. Two days later, on January 10, the website of the Juvenile Court of the Maldives became inaccessible, displaying a defacement message before going offline completely. The message was attributed to a group calling itself TeaM NETWORK9, which identified as “Bharatiya hackers” (Indian hackers).

The hackers cited “inflammatory and offensive statements” by Maldivian officials—specifically naming Malsha, Hassan Zihan, and Mariyum Shiuna—as motivation for the attack, describing the remarks as “illiterate and rascist [sic]” and damaging to bilateral relations. Their statement warned of further actions that could “severly [sic] impact your cyber space” unless Maldives ceased “provocation” and reflected on the consequences. The message included hashtags promoting Indian islands (#ExploreIndianIsland, #Lakshadweep) and thanked other hacker groups. This incident followed the earlier January 7 disruptions, which authorities had not publicly linked to malicious activity despite the hackers’ claim of a coordinated campaign. The attacks temporarily disrupted public access to critical government digital services but did not report data breaches or long-term operational damage beyond the documented downtime.

Sources

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