The Iranian Cyber Army has struck again, this time by defacing the Voice of America website.Iranian computer hackers on Monday hijacked the website of the Voice of America, replacing its Internet home page with a banner bearing an Iranian flag and an image of an AK-47 assault rifle.It is interesting news that a pro-Iranian group defaces Voice of America websites, but we need to put this in the appropriate context by noting that US and/or Israel hackers wrote Stuxnet, while Iranian hackers have defaced a news website. The levels of skill in those two attacks are not comparable, with webpage defacement ranking as an entry level to moderate level hacker skill while Stuxnet is considered one of the most impressive pieces of code in programming history.
The group called on Secretary of State Hillary Clinton to “hear the voice of oppressed nations.”
The banner stated that “we have proven that we can.”
The message called on the United States to “stop interfering in Islamic countries.”
It then listed more 90 websites of VOA it claimed has also been hacked.
A State Department spokesman could not be reached for comment.
An administration official said the group identified with the banner is known as the Iranian Cyber Army.
VOA operates a global network of news and information outlets that reflect official U.S. foreign policies. It broadcasts, through radio, television and the Internet to scores of nations around the world.
It is however noteworthy that over the last few months the Iranian Cyber Army has managed to deface Baidu (China's largest search engine), Twitter, and now Voice of America. In all of these attacks known vulnerabilities and techniques were used in the attacks. The Iranian Cyber Army is thought to be a Shiite group that supports Hezbollah based on images used in previous attacks.
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By the way, if you want to read an interesting story that has to do with internet security, this new HBGary story is quite the read.
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