SINGAPORE, Aug 13 — Singapore authorities have taken down more than 500 fake websites impersonating the Home Ministry (MHA) and seven agencies under it, the ministry said.

The affected agencies, all part of Singapore’s Home Team, were the Singapore Police Force (SPF), Central Narcotics Bureau (CNB), Singapore Civil Defence Force (SCDF), Immigration and Checkpoints Authority (ICA), Singapore Prison Service (SPS), Home Team Science and Technology Agency (HTX) and Home Team Academy (HTA).

In a statement published on its website on Wednesday, MHA said HTX detected and identified the websites on August 10 and took down all of them by August 11.

It said the fake websites replicated the official branding and publicly available content from the websites of the ministry and the affected Home Team agencies, potentially misleading the public into believing they were accessing official MHA or Home Team agency websites.

“Based on investigations so far, there was no evidence that the fake websites were used to perpetrate scams or phish for information from members of the public.

“There was also no evidence that the systems of MHA or Home Team agencies were compromised or accessed without authorisation,” it said on Wednesday.

MHA said it would continue to monitor the situation closely and work with the relevant agencies and partners to identify and take appropriate action against any websites that impersonate its agencies. — Bernama