Twitter hacked by ‘Iranian Cyber Army’

Cyber-terrorism has struck again, with Twitter last night hacked by a group calling itself the Iranian Cyber Army. The site is now back up and running normally, but questions are being asked both about who the Iranian Cyber Army may be and how Twitter seems to be attacked so often and so easily.

Twitter has had several security scares in the past. Some have compromised the whole site, while others have attacked individual accounts. Phishing scams are common, with the popularity of URL shorteners adding to the chances of being caught out as you blindly click on links.

But last night’s attack has to be the worst Twitter has experienced yet.

Twitter went down at around 10 p.m. Pacific Standard Time. It was inaccessible for about an hour, and the following image and message was plastered over the site’s homepage.

The accompanying message was written in a mixture of English and Farsi, and read as follows:-

Iranian Cyber Army

THIS SITE HAS BEEN HACKED BY IRANIAN CYBER ARMY

iRANiAN.CYBER.ARMY@GMAIL.COM

U.S.A. Think They Controlling And Managing Internet By Their Access, But They Don’t, We Control And Manage Internet By Our Power, So Do Not Try To Stimulation Iranian Peoples To….

NOW WHICH COUNTRY IN EMBARGO LIST? IRAN? USA?
WE PUSH THEM IN EMBARGO LIST ;)
Take Care.

The site was back up and running by 11:28 p.m., when Twitter updated its status page. The attack came in the form of a DNS hijack, with Twitter itself posting an explanation of what just happened soon after the event:

Twitter’s DNS records were temporarily compromised but have now been fixed. We are looking into the underlying cause and will update with more information soon.

No one seems to know anything about the Iranian Cyber Army at the heart of his attack. The name has never been heard of before, and wasn’t one of several similar groups operating at the time of the Iranian general election.

The general election back in June and the aftermath in which president Mahmoud Ahmadinejad was re-elected in dubious circumstances would seem to be the reason for this attack.

Twitter was at the forefront of a drive by those in the country to get information about what was happening in the country to a wider audience. Twitter even delayed scheduled site maintenance after being asked by the U.S. government to keep the communication channels open.

Whatever Twitter is doing to protect itself against these kinds of attacks is clearly not enough. As the site grows in popularity and importance in terms of a source for news then this situation clearly needs addressing.

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