Twitter taken over by "Iranian Cyber Army"

 

Gallery

By Barry Collins

Posted on 18 Dec 2009 at 07:36

Microblogging site Twitter has been hacked by a group proclaiming to be the "Iranian Cyber Army".

Visitors to the Twitter website were met with a black screen, with the message: "This site has been hacked by the Iranian Cyber Army". The screen also showed an Iranian flag and, curiously, a Gmail address for the hackers.

The hackers' message continued further down the page, stating: "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."

Several websites have screengrabs of the attack, including Digital Beat.

As of 7:40am, the site had returned to normal. A message on the Twitter blog states: "Twitter's DNS records were temporarily compromised tonight but have now been fixed. As some noticed, Twitter.com was redirected for a while but API and platform applications were working. We will update with more information and details once we've investigated more fully."

Twitter played an influential role in the disputed Iranian elections earlier this year, with many of the country's residents using the service to report vote rigging and other forms of alleged intimidation.

Twitter also became a focal point for worldwide protest, with users changing their stated location to Iran and turning their avatar green in solidarity with the Iranian people.