Sri Lankan police on Tuesday arrested a second suspect for allegedly hacking into the president’s official website last week.
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President Maithripala Sirisena’s official website was hacked last Friday and was defaced.
While the message was removed on Friday, visitors to the website were greeted with a message stating that the website was undergoing “scheduled maintenance”.
It demanded that A-level exams due to be held in April be rescheduled because they clashed with Sinhala and Tamil New Year celebrations.
They urged the government to be more careful about cyber security and advised the president to hold a snap election. Not long after it was hacked again, and the original threatening message was restored.
The presidential website was functioning normally on Monday. “The CID (Criminal Investigation Department) officials arrested a 17-year old school boy in connection with the hacking and he will be produced before the courts tomorrow”, the president’s spokesman, Dharmasri Bandara, told Reuters.
Previously many other government websites of Srilanka have been hacked.
A group that calls itself The Sri Lankan Youth took credit for the defacement, local newspaper The Sunday Times reports.
Stop the Prime Minister’s irresponsible work.
The boy was taken into custody on Monday under computer crimes laws and on conviction faces a fine of 300,000 rupees ($2,000) and up to three years in jail.
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Later a 26-year-old suspect was also arrested and is being questioned by police.
