Earlier today (Jan. 26), the official website of Malaysian Airlines was hacked by a group claiming support for the terrorist group ISIS threatening to release private information.
For seven hours this morning, the Malaysian Airlines site was down and replaced by a message from a group of hackers calling themselves “Lizard Squad”.
The original message read “404 – Plane Not Found” with an image of a Malaysian Airlines plane, referencing Malaysian Airlines Flight MH370 which went missing in March 2014 with 239 passengers and has still not been recovered.
The image was later changed to that of a lizard in a top hat with the added message “Hacked by LIZARD SQUAD – OFFICIAL CYBER CALIPHATE”, referencing the extremist Muslim group the Islamic State who have seized large areas of Iraq and Syria and declared them an Islamic Caliphate, and links to Twitter accounts associated with Lizard Squad. In some regions, the browser tab had the message “ISIS will prevail.”
Perhaps most alarming is the fact that on one of the group’s Twitter accounts, there were threats that they would be releasing personal information obtained from the Malaysian Airlines website. This was further backed up with a screenshot of what appeared to be a flight booking from Malaysian Airline’s internal e-mail system.
In response, Malaysian Airlines has said in a statement that this was a glitch and that user data has “remained secured.”
Lizard Squad is a hacking group that was active throughout 2014, targeting gaming relating services. For instance, they claimed responsibility for the Christmas attacks on Xbox Live and the Playstation Network.
The motives for targeting Malaysian Airlines are so far unknown.
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