A 17-year-old student from Kadugannawa was yesterday arrested for hacking President Maithripala Sirisena’s official website. A special CID team attached to the Cyber Crimes Unit made the arrest after two days of investigations into the incident.
Police said the suspect had allegedly gained access of the President’s officials website on Friday and deleted some data.
The website, www.president.gov.lk, continued to be offline since Friday following this incident for the second time.
Meanwhile, President’s Media Director Dharmasiri Ekanayake said a decision was taken to temporarily close the website while plans were afoot to enhance its security.
CID officials disclosed the suspect accessed the site and left a message under the name ‘The SriLankan Youth’ making several demands to the government.
The message called on the government to reconsider the decision to hold the GCE A/Level examination in April instead of August.
It also called on the government to be more mindful about the security of Sri Lankan websites. Failure to do so could result in the country having to face a cyber war, the message further warned.
