At least six Malaysian government websites were hacked into overnight after the Internet vigilante group Anonymous threatened to punish the authorities for censorship.

Sites that were targeted included the government's online portal, and the webpages of the information ministry, the fire and emergency services department and the land public transport commission.

Anonymous had warned it would attack the Malaysian government's online portal from Wednesday 1930 GMT to teach the country a lesson for censoring whistle-blower site WikiLeaks in an attack codenamed Operation Malaysia. to the International Monetary Fund, has raised concerns that governments and the private sector may struggle to defend against hackers.

In an earlier posting on pastebin.com, Anonymous had said Malaysia's censorship of films and television shows and its blocking of file-sharing websites amounted to a denial of human rights.

Malaysia's industry regulator Malaysian Communication and Multimedia Commission last week banned 10 file-sharing sites and ordered Internet service providers like Telekom Malaysia and Maxis to block access.

(Reporting by Liau Y-Sing and Niluksi Koswanage, editing by Miral Fahmy)