(Credit: Google Plus, screenshot)
Al Jazeera’s “English and Arabic websites” were hacked today, the Guardian reported. A statement posted on the sites read in part that:
“This is a response to your position against the people and government of Syria, especially your support of the armed terrorist groups and spreading false fabricated news.”
Reuters added that the hackers published “A Syrian flag and statement denouncing Al Jazeera’s ‘positions against the Syrian people and government.'”
According to Reuters, “al-Rashedon” said it hacked the site. The channel’s “TV broadcasts in Arabic and English were not affected,” according to The Washington Post, which reported that “in a statement, the channel said that some of its external servers were compromised.”
According to Gizmodo, “some readers are reporting the .net variant is showing up as defaced, rather than .com, while others can’t get the site to load at all.” But, Gizmodo’s Sam Biddle weighed in on the comments and said “.net looks fine to me, and .com is showing up as defaced for us.” When iMediaEthics checked at 5:10 p.m., Aljazeera.net led to a “forbidden error” page. AlJazeera.com wouldn’t load. See below the “error” page we received at aljazeera.net.
Last month, Reuters was hacked three times, as we have written. The first time, Reuters said its ‘blogging platform was compromised” and a fake interview with “the head of the Free Syrian Army, as well as at least one other story, were posted. Then, a Reuters Twitter account, @ReutersTech, was hacked. And, in mid-August, a fake story claiming that “Saudi Arabia’s foreign minister prince Saud al-Faisal has died” was posted on Reuters’ blogs by hackers.
Meanwhile, this year, WikiLeaks, the UK Telegraph, and the Guardian have all published leaked emails purporting to be from Syria.
We have written to Al Jazeera seeking more information and will update with any response.
CORRECTION - September 4, 2012 09:05 PM
Five minutes after posting this story we noticed a significant typo saying “all three” of the Reuters hacks last month included posts related to Syria, when the third hack included a post related to Saudi Arabia.
