KUALA LUMPUR – Kuala Lumpur City Hall (DBKL) is investigating possible foul play behind the prolonged outage of its Adu@KL public complaints portal, which has been offline for over a month.
Kuala Lumpur Mayor Datuk Seri Maimunah Mohd Sharif confirmed to Scoop that DBKL is working closely with the Malaysian Communications and Multimedia Commission (MCMC) and the National Cyber Security Agency (Nacsa) to determine the root cause of the disruption and tighten cybersecurity protocols.
However, she assured that the platform will be back up, along with other systems, by May 20.
“There are indicators suggesting potential malicious interference. We’re not ruling anything out at this stage,” Maimunah said when contacted.
“Investigations are ongoing with the full support of MCMC and Nacsa, and we are on track to restore full functionality to Adu@KL and other systems by May 20.”
Scoop first reported on the outage on May 16, highlighting the vacuum in public feedback mechanisms and the silence from DBKL at the time.
The revelation comes after mounting frustration from city residents since April, many of whom rely on the Adu@KL portal to file complaints on issues ranging from waste management to road maintenance.
However, according to the mayor, all systems have been steadily recovering since May 1.
“No data was lost. All backups are secure, and recovery is being carried out with extreme care to preserve information integrity,” she stressed.
To ensure service continuity during the outage, DBKL activated alternative support through its official social media channels and has been issuing regular updates.
Since the disruption was detected in April, several other DBKL online services – including the e-Licensing System, e-Housing, Tempah@KL, and EPIC payment system – were also affected.
The mayor added that a full internal review is underway to identify weaknesses in DBKL’s digital infrastructure and to strengthen defences against similar incidents in the future.
“Our priority is to restore public trust in our systems. We understand the inconvenience caused, and we’re taking serious steps to make sure this doesn’t happen again.”
As of today, DBKL expects all key services – including Adu@KL – to be fully operational by May 20, with complete restoration of other affected systems by May 23. – May 19, 2025