KUALA LUMPUR, Feb 27 — Health Deputy Minister Lukanisman Awang Sauni today denied allegations there was a data leakage for vaccine recipients registered under Health Ministry’s MySejahtera (MySJ) app.

He told Parliament this afternoon that a "super admin” downloaded three million MySejahtera’s vaccine recipients’ data as a preventive measure because there were attempts to hack the government’s health mobile application.

"Regarding the security of the MySejahtera application based on the Auditor-General’s Report, there is no doubt that 1.12 million attack attempts are a large (amount of) attacks.

"But what happened was MySejahtera managed to control the attack and there was no leakage.

"Regarding the report of three million data being downloaded by the "super admin” account, this is a security measure made when an attack occurs, the "super admin” has to take action and upload the data,” he said responding to Kuala Langat MP Ahmad Yunus Hairi’s question on data security.

However, Lukanisman did not elaborate on the matter as the issue was still under police investigation.

Previously, Auditor-General Datuk Seri Nik Azman Nik Abdul Majid said that a "super admin” account set up by a person or persons unknown was found to have downloaded private information belonging to three million people through the app two years ago.

The audit report said the account raised red flags as the personal information was downloaded from multiple internet protocol (IP) addresses.

The MySJ app had been developed initially to register residents in Malaysia for the Covid-19 vaccine in 2021 to curb the coronavirus spread that had battered the country’s healthcare system.