KUALA LUMPUR, Feb 17 — As if living known primarily as the daughter of tycoon Tan Sri Lee Kim Yew wasn’t enough, Datin Dian Lee Cheng Ling now has to contend with hackers who managed to access her children’s private school email.
The entrepreneur who ventured into politics by joining the Malaysian United Democratic Alliance (Muda) last December 23 and is now the Opposition party’s central executive committee member, had both her private Facebook and Instagram accounts accessed by hackers two days ago.
She filed a report with the Malaysian Communications and Multimedia Commission (MCMC) yesterday afternoon.
Contacted by Malay Mail today, the younger Lee said she initially planned not to make a fuss as the hackers did not change anything in the social media accounts.
But then they went after her children’s private school email account.
So she took to Twitter to highlight the issue.
In the last 24 hours I have received numerous notifications that unknown persons have been attempting to hack into my various social media accounts.
— Dian Lee 🏴 (@iamdianlee) February 16, 2022
They also attempt to break into the email account of my children’s school activities. pic.twitter.com/jJT7FTjGLI
“I don’t know if I’m interpreting this as a means of intimidation but I have to ask why did they access the children’s school email and not just my personal or work email? After all, they hacked my assistant’s Instagram account too.
“I knew when I decided to join politics it wouldn’t be easy, but they know what means most to me so they chose to go into that particular email. This is why I want to join Muda,” Dian told Malay Mail.
News of Dian joining Muda gained public attention and went viral on social media earlier this month.
On February 10, Dian said she had been associated her whole life with her property magnate father whenever she wanted to do something, but hoped that the public would view her as an independent person.
She understood the public scepticism over her involvement in politics due to Malaysians having been hurt and being frustrated with the state of the country, but pointed out that she “cannot dictate who my father is” and emphasised that she has her own principles, values and beliefs.
Since the cyberattack, Dian has upped her cybersecurity and authentication process.
She may have been rattled immediately after finding out about the hack, but said her resolve is firm.
“I’m not taking a step back. This affirms why the existence of Muda is more important now than ever. Muda is trying to show a new way of politics. We should be talking about how to serve the people, make better policies to develop the country.
“This is what politics is about, not of intimidating individuals or putting someone down with personal attacks, these should be things of the past,” she said.
She said the hackers had used sophisticated methods to access her accounts as none of the gadgets nor browsers used were highlighted.
Dian said Google’s security process is good. As soon as the illegal login was triggered, she got the alert and not only did Google not allow access to the hackers, it gave her time to change the password.
“The thing is these hackers’ locations were shown as Bintulu and Bentong. Usually when a login occurs they’ll also tell you what device the access was made from but in these instances none of the devices nor browsers were identifiable.
“Which leads me to think they were using a secure way to access my accounts,” she added.
Dian is married to Datuk Jared Lim and they have three children.
