Sunday 20 October 2013

Qatar is Down ! Syrian Electronic Army hijacks major Qatar websites

The Syrian Electronic Army (SEA) is at it again. The hacktivist group, who are known to back Syrian President Bashar al-Assad, has hacked many high profile Qatar based websites, including the Google, Facebook, Aljazeera and Government - Military websites.

Starting at about 4:25 am (GMT 5:30+), the Syrian Electronic Army shared this message on Twitter: Qatar is #down and  following that, they went about switching off government and private websites using the .qa extension.

The domains are managed by Qatar’s Ministry of Information and Communication (ictQatar). Apparently, the Syrian Electronic Army gained access to Qatar Domain Registrar (portal.registry.qa) and modifies the DNS entires to redirects the targeted websites to servers controlled by hackers serving defacement page, that include a picture of Assad and the groups logo, as shown.

The List of the targeted websites is posted on Twitter by hackers - these include:
  • moi.gov.qa
  • facebook.qa
  • gov.qa
  • vodafone.qa
  • aljazeera.net.qa
  • google.com.qa
  • ooredoo.com.qa
  • diwan.gov.qa
  • qaf.mil.qa
  • mofa.gov.qa