Cybersecurity giant Cloudflare says all OK on its end, as Fahmi stays tight-lipped over news portal's block

Global cybersecurity firm Cloudflare has ruled out any problems on its end during the 48-hour denial of access suffered by the MalaysiaNow website last week, fuelling suspicion of an illegal attempt at blocking the news portal.

A Cloudflare technician, responding to a query by MalaysiaNow, said they were "unable to replicate" the issue, adding that internal logs did not show "any specific error codes".

The finding is likely to add fuel to the suspicion that authorities had a hand in the episode, which saw MalaysiaNow's website blocked for the users of several major local internet service providers (ISPs) at the same time.

"The blocking was confirmed as a block page was served, providing evidence through network measurement data by the Open Observatory of Network Interference and Cloudflare," said an internet expert, adding that the nature of the block indicated a deliberate act to make MalaysiaNow "unavailable on several networks at the same time".

The block was lifted on June 29 following condemnation from opposition politicians, journalist groups and activists, who urged Communications and Digital Minister Fahmi Fadzil to come clean on the matter.

Fahmi, whose ministry is in charge of the Malaysian Communications and Multimedia Commission (MCMC), has yet to provide an explanation other than to say that he never instructed the block of "any news portal".

As of 3pm today, MalaysiaNow's repeated attempts to reach Fahmi had failed, with no response on WhatsApp. One of his aides instead said that the matter should be referred to MCMC. 

MalaysiaNow has contacted the regulator which has promised a response.

MCMC is empowered to instruct ISPs to block "undesirable" websites. In the past, such blocks were extended to news portals and websites critical of the government.

Last week's episode was the first time in many years that a news portal with official media accreditation had been blocked, after MCMC restricted access to news portal The Malaysian Insider in 2016, believed to be over its coverage of the 1MDB scandal.

But while The Malaysian Insider was served with a notice by MCMC, no such warning was given to MalaysiaNow or Malaysia Today, a political website run by UK-based Malaysian blogger Raja Petra Kamarudin.

Raja Petra said his visitors had dropped by 70% following restrictions on the users of several ISPs, including Maxis.

The blocks came amid a series of threats by Fahmi against social media platforms as well as members of the public, warning them of action over their online content.

Fahmi was recently criticised after making a similar threat to viewers who had tuned in to a Tik Tok Live section, telling his critics to "behave yourselves" or prepare for a police car outside their homes.