Eighth district GOP website hit by anti-Israel hackers
Monday, January 18, 2010 at 10:30 am
- 11 Comments
Until recently, the website for Minnesota’s 8th District GOP offered musical holiday greetings to Christians and Jews, rotating quotes by Abraham Lincoln and Ronald Reagan, and an essay on Barack Obama’s “great power grab of 2009.” Now it shows a burning American flag, the words “death to Israel,” masked militants with RPGs and the telltale words “HaCKeD by CWkomando.”
The site now contains no links, but only words and images, including a dedication, “For Palestine,” the repeated phrase “Allahu Akbar” (“God is great,” in Arabic) and photos of masked militants with rocket launchers and rifles. (At the online forum Yedda.com, commenter “theITguy” writes that the hacker group is “an annoying bunch of kids out of Salt Lake City, Utah, just trying to get attention,” although he offers no evidence.)
But Minnesota’s GOP isn’t the only organization that had to deal with hackers this morning. A French/Italian restaurant in Chicago had its site defaced the same way, as did a Twitter user in San Francisco. A site called GrowSmartBusiness was also hit by the group recently.
But it may not be ideology that made the Minnesota Republicans a target. What the 8th District GOP has in common with these other three sites is the same internet service provider, Network Solutions.
A call to the district GOP office for comment wasn’t immediately returned.
11 Comments
Comment posted January 18, 2010 @ 2:43 pm
As Rodney Dangerfield said, “Now I know why tigers eat their young.”
Comment posted January 18, 2010 @ 4:02 pm
Hi Paul, I am Shashi Bellamkonda, Social Media Swami at Network Solutions. Please follow the blog post for more details: http://blog.networksolutions.com/2010/psa-prevent-your-website-from-being-defaced/. Our staff is looking into these issues. If you have any questions in the meantime, please contact us at listen@networksolutions.com. Thank you
Shashi
Comment posted January 18, 2010 @ 9:18 pm
Doing a google search on “hacked” and “selam direnise devam” will show the extent of the hacking targets: I can see 3,340 hits so far.
Pingback posted January 19, 2010 @ 10:09 pm
[...] of the defaced pages belonged to Minnesota’s 8th District GOP, according to a story in The Minnesota Independent, which said the Arabic writing that accompanies the defaced pages [...]
Comment posted January 20, 2010 @ 5:16 pm
Bloody tools did the same thing to Sebadoh’s website as well.
Pingback posted January 22, 2010 @ 3:21 pm
[...] of the defaced pages belonged to Minnesota’s 8th District GOP, according to a story in The Minnesota Independent, which said the Arabic writing that accompanies the defaced pages [...]
Pingback posted January 23, 2010 @ 5:33 pm
[...] 3. Eighth District GOP website hit by anti-israel hackers. The MN Independent. I guess that’s one way to express your anger with the GOP… [...]
Comment posted February 7, 2010 @ 2:50 pm
Weird. I saw the Sebadoh site, and stumbled across this article trying to find out how long it had been down.
The Sebadoh page carries a little more text. It’s all in Turkish, except it’s Turkish that’s clearly been typed out by someone without access to a Turkish keyboard. The following:
“Kutlu Davana Onder Hazreti Muhammed”dir.
Tek Siarin Islam, Gayense Sehadettir.
Zafer Yakindir, Cunku Bu Gecici Esarettir.
Kufrun Hesap Yeri Ise Hem Dunya Hem Ahirettir.”
Should read:
“Kutlu Davana Önder Hazreti Muhammed’dir.
Tek Siarın İslam, Gayense Şehadettir.
Zafer Yakındır, Çünkü Bu Geçici Esarettir.
Kufrun Hesap Yeri İse Hem Dünya Hem Ahirettir.”
Which basically means:
“The blessed Prophet Muhammad is happy for the trial.
Islam’s only motto is the Shahada.
Victory is near, because this is a temporary captivity.
The world and the afterlife are both places for accounting for threats.”
That’s an extremely rough gloss as my Turkish is extremely rusty.
So I’d lean towards crediting the “Utah teenagers” theory, because the slogans appear to have been added by a person or persons with absolutely no knowledge of what they say or mean.
Pingback posted September 28, 2011 @ 11:10 am
[...] GOP website featured music for Christians and Jews during the 2009 Christmas season. It was hacked and replaced with a burning American flag, the words “death to Israel,” and images of masked [...]
Pingback posted September 28, 2011 @ 11:15 am
[...] GOP website featured music for Christians and Jews during the 2009 Christmas season. It was hacked and replaced with a burning American flag, the words “death to Israel,” and images of masked [...]
Pingback posted September 28, 2011 @ 11:16 am
[...] GOP website featured music for Christians and Jews during the 2009 Christmas season. It was hacked and replaced with a burning American flag, the words “death to Israel,” and images of masked [...]
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