Fighting cyber crime

May 3--IRANIAN hackers are waging a daily campaign against Bahrain government websites, it has emerged. The GDN reported on Sunday that the Housing Ministry's website had been targeted over the weekend.

However, authorities have also fended off cyber attacks on websites belonging to the Interior Ministry and Bahrain News Agency, a senior official told the GDN yesterday on condition of anonymity.

"We have tracked down some of the Internet Protocol (IP) addresses and found they were linked with Iran and some even with the outlawed group Hizbollah," said an official from the Information Affairs Authority's (IAA) Publications and Press Directorate.

"There are also some Iranians in Europe targeting our websites."

The GDN reported on Sunday that the Housing Ministry reported no leak of information from its database of eligible applicants and beneficiaries of housing services, despite Saturday's attack on its website.

Ministry sources concluded the hackers were Iranian after they found an image of a hand covered in blood and a soldier moving away from a corpse with a US flag in the background, amid anti-government messages.

Its website has since been blocked and the ministry's Information Technology section is now fixing it.

"Such attempts clearly show that these hackers are spreading false claims by targeting government websites," said the official.

"We have the latest technologies to counter these attacks by all means and are successfully stopping hackers on a daily basis.

"The hackers first started to hit websites in Bahrain during the unrest and then stopped. But since last week, they are active again."

Bahrain authorities have noted down all IPs that are being used by hackers that target government websites and are awaiting permission to file official complaints against them.

The official said that some websites were calling for violence or Jihad in Bahrain.

"We know for a fact these calls are made by hackers in Iran and Pakistan, spreading their message of violence or calling for Jihad against GCC troops in Bahrain," he said.

"At the moment we are on standby round-the-clock, monitoring all online content and blocking it if it violates rules and regulations."

The website of the Philippines Embassy in Bahrain was hacked last month to plant propaganda against Bahrain authorities.

It was targeted on the same day that the GDN and four of our sister publications came under attack from cyber criminals with links to Iran.

A report carried by Iranian television channel Press TV, which has gone out of its way to stoke tensions in Bahrain, was uploaded onto the Philippines Embassy website on April 5.

It falsely claimed that the organs of people killed in anti-government protests were being removed by GCC security forces.

The GDN reported earlier this month that a group calling itself the Delta Hacking Team had failed to hack into our website.

However, it had managed to alter the homepages of four other magazines owned by our parent group Al Hilal.

sandy@gdn.com.bh

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