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Cyber Crime

Syrian Electronic Army attacked most major Qatar websites

Syrian Electronic Army attacked most major Qatar websites to protest against the support of the government to the rebels against Assad. The Syrian Electronic Army (SEA) has hit a new series of targets in a large hacking campaign against high profile Qatar based websites. The Syrian Electronic Army is considered one of the most active and dangerous group of […]

Syrian Electronic Army attacked most major Qatar websites

Syrian Electronic Army attacked most major Qatar websites to protest against the support of the government to the rebels against Assad.

The Syrian Electronic Army (SEA) has hit a new series of targets in a large hacking campaign against high profile Qatar based websites. The Syrian Electronic Army is considered one of the most active and dangerous group of hacktivists due the large number of high profile companies and government entities it has attacked with success, including Facebook, Twitter, Google, The Financial Times, The Guardian, the Associated Press, Aljazeera, numerous Government and Military websites and The White House.

Starting at about 1.54am local time, the Syrian Electronic Army posted the following message on Twitter:

Qatar is #down 

and  immediately after the group started to shut down government and private websites.
Syrian Electronic Army Qatar is down
A huge quantity of domains having an extension .qa was attacked including the ones of Qatar’s Ministry of Information and Communication (ictQatar), the Supreme Education Council, the Emiri Diwan, and even Google.com.qa.
It seems that The Syrian Electronic Army gained access to the Qatar Domain Registrar (portal.registry.qa) and modified the DNS records to redirect the targeted websites to servers controlled by the group. The hackers posted on Twitter the following image to demonstrate that they have gained the access to the Domain Registrar of Qatar:
Syrian Electronic Army Registry Zone Info
These servers were used to show defacement pages with the images of the Syrian President Assad and the group’s symbol.
Syrian Electronic Army defaced page
The list of the targeted websites is posted on Twitter by the members of the Syrian Electronic Army:
  • 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

A so huge list is really shocking in my opinion and demonstrates how much dangerous could be state-sponsored operations against private enterprises that must be supported by respective government cyber strategies.

Why Syrian Electronic Army attacked Qatar?

The Syrian Electronic Army has targeted Qatar government many times due to the support it provides to the rebels inside Syria that desire to overthrow the President Al-Assad’s regime.

Last April the group hacked FIFA’s Twitter accounts to publicly accuse Qatar of buying the 2022 World Cup, the attack was anticipated by the hack of Qatar Foundation’s social media accounts.

Fortunately DNS attacks like these ones have a limited impact, typically victims are able to regain control of their websites a few hours after such offensive.

Pierluigi Paganini

(Security Affairs –  Syrian Electronic Army, hacktivism, Hacking)

Tags

cyber warfareHackingHacktivismQatarstate-sponsored attacksSyriaSyrian Electronic Army

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