Malaysia Airlines Websites Hacked With ISIS Attack Claim

By Clement Tan

Photographer: Charles Pertwee/Bloomberg

The Malaysian Airline System Bhd. logo is displayed as passengers check in at Kuala... Read More

Malaysia Airlines’s website in some regions was hacked by a group calling itself “Cyber Caliphate” with the slogan “ISIS will prevail,” the latest in a series of cyber-attacks by people claiming affiliation with Islamic State.
The website of the carrier, which lost two planes last year in crashes, opened with a picture of an aircraft with the words “404-Plane Not Found” and “Hacked by Cyber Caliphate.” On the tab section of the Internet browser was the phrase, “ISIS will prevail.”
The site subsequently showed a picture of a lizard and the name of the hacker group Lizard Squad. The carrier’s domain name system was compromised while the web servers are intact, the airline said in an e-mailed statement.
Earlier this month, Twitter and YouTube accounts of the U.S. Central Command were compromised by messages supporting Islamic State in a hacking attack the Pentagon dismissed as a prank. The cyber-attack was confirmed by Central Command, which oversees U.S. military operations in t
he Middle East, including the fight against Islamic State extremists.
Reported breaches on federal computer systems increased to 46,605 in 2013 from 26,942 in 2009, according to the U.S. Computer Emergency Readiness Team. That followed terrorist attacks earlier this month in France in which gunmen claiming ties to Islamic State and al-Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula killed 17 people.

Sony Hack

Last year, the website of Sony Corp.’s pictures unit was hacked. Weeks after the U.S. declared that North Korea was behind the attack on Sony Pictures, researchers began pointing fingers at everyone from an ex-Sony employee to Russian criminals to a band of video-game enthusiasts called the Lizard Squad.
The hacker group Lizard Squad may have ties to Guardians of Peace, the group claiming responsibility for the Sony attack, according to research from IntelCrawler, a Los Angeles cyber-intelligence firm. Online postings from members of each group use similar language and slang. They cross-post on one another’s social-media accounts, make similar extortion attempts, and carry out attacks on almost identical timelines.
Malaysia Airlines lost MH370 last March with 239 people on board. No debris has been found yet in the world’s longest search for a jet in the era of modern aviation.
MH17 was shot down in July over Ukraine, killing all 298 people on board.
The airline has resolved the issue with its service provider and the system is expected to be fully recovered, the carrier said. The matter was also reported to the country’s cyber security department.
“Malaysia Airlines assures customers and clients that its website was not hacked and this temporary glitch does not affect their bookings and that user data remains secured,” the airline said in the statement.