Malaysia holds its national election this Sunday, pitting the ruling National Front party against an unusually strong People's Alliance coalition in what observers are calling the most closely contested race in the nation's history. But as citizens head to the polls, the country has seen a flood of ISP blocks and DDoS actions against opposition sites and independent media.

The most visible actions are DDoS attacks, a technique that floods sites with bogus traffic, making them inaccessible to normal users. It's a technique often aimed at opposition parties in the days leading up to an election. DDoS mitigation service Cloudflare told The Verge it has seen several news organization come under attack in the past week, and that the vast majority of the actions have been Layer 7 attacks originating from within the country. It strongly suggests that whoever's behind the attack is local.

"We're used to seeing DDoS and hacking attacks prior to elections, but in this case they're doing a lot more, like arresting bloggers for old posts and jamming radio stations," said Gustaf Bjorksten, technology director at Access Now. "There seems to be very little they won't do to stop information they don't like."