TRE failed attempt at scaremongering

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An honorable member of the Coffee Shop Has Just Posted the Following:

TRE wrote an article saying government websites all down...they then provided the links to the websites.

At first people try, it is really down...then later people find out that the links that TRE provided is wrong lah!

KNN! Trying to hoodwink people and cause fear. Just add www to the URL then can work already!

Just wondering, is it an offence to spread fear and panic within the country?




Quote:
It appears that the majority of Singapore’s government-related websites are currently and simultaneously undergoing “planned maintenance” or experiencing “hardware failure and routing issues”, including the website of the Prime Minister’s Office.

TR Emeritus (TRE) was alerted at about 10:45pm today (6 Nov) to the inaccessibility of most government-related websites and was able to confirm the following to be offline or having issues as of 11:00pm:

Note: To visit these websites without leaving TRE, right click on the link, then click “Open in New Tab” or “Open in New Window”.

For an explaination of the various error codes, please click here to open a new window.

Government Agencies

http://isd.gov.sg/
http://www.isd.gov.sg/
http://singpass.gov.sg/
http://prisons.gov.sg/
http://spf.gov.sg/
http://pub.gov.sg/
http://mha.gov.sg/
http://mof.gov.sg/
http://mfa.gov.sg/
http://mlaw.gov.sg/
http://mnd.gov.sg/
http://mti.gov.sg/
http://pmo.gov.sg/
http://acra.gov.sg/
http://ava.gov.sg/
http://a-star.edu.sg/
http://cra.gov.sg/
http://cscollege.gov.sg/
http://ccs.gov.sg/content.html
http://cea.gov.sg/
http://dsta.gov.sg/
http://ema.gov.sg/
http://hsa.gov.sg/
http://hlb.gov.sg/
http://ida.gov.sg/
http://iseas.edu.sg/
http://iesingapore.gov.sg/
http://ite.edu.sg/
http://jtc.gov.sg/
http://lta.gov.sg/
http://mas.gov.sg/
http://peb.gov.sg/
http://nparks.gov.sg/ (accessible via secured connection – https://nparks.gov.sg/)
http://pub.gov.sg/
http://sac.gov.sg/
http://healthprofessionals.gov.sg/
http://slf.gov.sg/
http://sla.gov.sg/
http://smc.gov.sg/
http://ssc.gov.sg/
http://stb.gov.sg/
http://toteboard.gov.sg/
http://ura.gov.sg/
http://ago.gov.sg/
http://agc.gov.sg/
http://cabinet.gov.sg/
http://psc.gov.sg/
http://parliament.gov.sg/
http://supremecourt.gov.sg/
http://subcourts.gov.sg/
http://istana.gov.sg/
http://iac.gov.sg/

Town Councils

http://ectc.org.sg/
http://hbptc.org.sg/
http://prpg-tc.org.sg/

Apparently 3 out of 16 town council websites are down.

Some websites are accessible via their apps mirror i.e. if an “app” is prepended to the domain name e.g. http://app.mti.gov.sg is accessible. But not by direct access e.g. http://mti.gov.sg.

http://pmo.gov.sg/ is accessible but returns 404 Not Found – suggesting that all the files in the web directory have either gone missing or been deleted. Another possibility is that the main index file has been deleted.

http://app.acra.gov.sg/, http://app.cra.gov.sg/ is accessible but returns “Directory Listing Denied” or “403 Forbidden” – suggesting that all the files in the web directory, again, have either gone missing or been deleted. Its main website at http://www.acra.gov.sg” has been mysteriously redirected to http://app.cra.gov.sg/public/www/home.aspx, a very unorthodox directory structure for a professional website.

http://a-star.edu.sg/ is accessible and shows an “Under Construction” page – IIS Dynamic Content disabled, suggesting it is in the process of being restored.
http://muis.gov.sg/, http://slf.gov.sg/ is accessible but returns “Bad Request (Invalid Hostname)” – suggesting an error in the server’s configuration.

http://mpa.gov.sg/ is accessible but returns “Access Denied by Security Policy” – suggesting firewall has been activated and its ruleset has been set to “deny all” access, most likely in the process of fine-tuning the firewall ruleset.

https://nac.gov.sg/ is accessible but visitors are forced to use secured protocol (https) to access its website, suggesting that it is enforcing stricter access rules for visitors (and hackers?) during access.

All these websites are accessible but return “No website configured for this address” – suggesting that all their contents have been wiped off or their DNS records have been tamopered with so as to point to an invalid IP address: http://score.gov.sg/, http://sla.gov.sg/, http://agc.gov.sg/, http://cabinet.gov.sg/, http://supremecourt.gov.sg/, http://istana.gov.sg/

The following websites are completely inaccessible:

http://smc.gov.sg/
http://snb.gov.sg/
http://spc.gov.sg/

The following websites have been mysteriously redirected to the Singapore Medical Council at http://www.healthprofessionals.gov.s...f/smc/en.html:

http://www.smc.gov.sg/
http://www.snb.gov.sg/
http://www.spc.gov.sg/

http://tcmpb.gov.sg and http://www.tcmpb.gov.sg too have been mysteriously redirected to http://www.healthprofessionals.gov.sg.

As matters stand at this moment in time, unless the entire data centre(s) housing the servers have been burnt down or all the DNS records of these affected websites have been poisoned or hijacked, no logical explanation can be provided for this strange phenomenon.

It would be interesting to see what explanation (if any) IDA has for the latest massive downing.

Editor’s Notes:

* Some websites may have been restored since the information contained in this article are about an hour late due to the need for verification and editing.

** As of 1:00am (6 Nov), most of the websites are in the process of being restored and some are now accessible by prepending a “www” to the domain name or via secured protocol (https).

*** This article is still in the process of being updated as investigations and verifications are ongoing.

http://www.tremeritus.com/2013/11/06...websites-down/




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