Saturday, Oct 19, 2013
Dubai - Qatar’s .QA domain was hacked on Saturday by the infamous group the Syrian Electronic Army. At approximately 1.54 am, the SEA posted this message on Twitter: Qatar is #down. Apparently the group was able to access the itctQatar’s Domain’s.qa registrar and shut everything down from there. The domains are managed by Qatar’s Ministry of Information and Communication. The group successfully managed to hack government and private websites using the .QA extension including the Emiri Diwan, the Supreme Education Council and the Ministry of Interior, even managing to shutdown google.com.qa. The websites were still down at 1pm on Saturday--some websites showed a picture of Syrian President Bashar Al Assad smiling- but the picture had then been replaced by “CPU Limit Reached” error. The Syrian Electronic Army has repeatedly targeted Qatar because of its support for the rebels and its calls for Al Assad to resign. Last year the group hacked the Doha-based Al Jazeera News Network. In March of this year SEA hackers took over Qatar Foundation’s social media accounts and in April FIFA’s Twitter account was hacked and it posted a message accusing Qatar of buying the 2022 World Cup.
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