Qatar based websites the Google, Facebook, Aljazeera and Government and Military websites are hacked by Syrian Electronic Army (SEA)
The attacks are started at 1.54 am local time 4:25 am (GMT 5:30+), The hacktivist group who are known to back Syrian President Bashar al-Assad. 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 attacks are started at 1.54 am local time 4:25 am (GMT 5:30+), The hacktivist group who are known to back Syrian President Bashar al-Assad. 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. They went about switching off government and private websites using the .QA extension, including Ministry of Interior, the Supreme Education Council, the Emiri Diwan, and even Google.com.qa
Another tweet from SEA shows that they have unauthorized access to Domain Registrar of Qatar
The Syrian Electronic Army has repeatedly targeted Qatar because of its support of rebels inside Syria and calls for President Al-Assad to resign.
Updates
Oct. 19 | 11:33am:
Websites are starting to come back online, but not all. The Ministry of Interior and Qatar Exchange are now working, as are Ooredoo, Vodafone, Ministry of Foreign Affairs and Al Jazeera Finance.
Others, including the Supreme Education Council, Google and Facebook’s local sites, and the government e-services site Hukoomi are still offline.
Oct. 19 | 12:10pm:
Google.com.qa is working again, too. Not everyone is able to access all of the sites though, as it can take time to get the updated Domain Name System (DNS) data onto all servers.
Oct. 19 | 3:29pm:
Most, if not all, of the websites that were taken down by the SEA appear to be back online now. Are there any websites you’re not able to access?
Have you been affected?
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