According to Malaysian media, the competition management system (CMS-FAM) - which stores player data, match statistics, team registration and important documents has been hacked. On the website, a notice appeared: "Domign name, browser or database has been attacked", along with a mocking message about the naturalization case: "These people are playing football or playing a game of forging documents? FIFA should punish FAM, not PSSI. The hackers also demanded a ransom of up to $7,000 (over VND 184 million).
Immediately afterwards, FAM issued a notice on its homepage, affirming that they were still waiting to receive all the decision documents from FIFA to conduct the appeal process.
FAM's legal team is ready to take action as soon as they receive relevant documents. After having all the decisions, we will file an appeal with strong support documents, General Secretary Khan Khanh Azman Hj Rahman stated.
However, Malaysian fans expressed disappointment because this is a message that FAM has repeated for the past 10 days without any concrete progress. Many opinions said that the Federation's failure to file an appeal shows that they are "favoring" FIFA's sanctions.
Previously, on September 26, FIFA announced the decision to sanction FAM and 7 naturalized players including facundo Garces, Gabriel Arrocha, Rodrigo Holgado, Imanol Machuca, Joao figueiredo, Jon Irazabal and Hector Hevel for using fake documents. All 7 players were suspended from playing for 12 months, while FAM was fined an amount equivalent to nearly 12 billion VND.
Amid the crisis of penalties and cyber attacks, FAM is said to be in a weak position in the legal battle with FIFA. Many sources predict that if the appeal cannot be completed in accordance with regulations, the Asian Football Confederation (AFC) may soon take action to issue more disciplinary measures for Malaysian football.
