Colombo Telegraph Was Hacked
The Colombo Telegraph website was hacked last night, apparently by a group sympathetic to the Syrian regime.
The Colombo Telegraph technical team quickly resolved this, though some users may continue to experience issues for a while longer. We thank our readers for their patience and support through tweets and emails sent to us.
The attackers exploited a security flaw in one Word Press plugin to gain access to the website. Once they gained access they retrieved the database credentials of the system and updated three articles of the website. The changes in the articles consisted in forcing the redirection of the web browser to the attacker’s website.
According to their website, http://syrian-es.org/indexs/ the SEA (Syrian Electronic Army) attacks websites that publish content against Syria Government. But it is unclear what articles they were targeting in the Colombo Telegraph.
Last couple of months Colombo Telegraph technical team stopped attacks against Colombo TelegraphWikiLeaks related database originated from a server in the Amazon Cloud. Our technical team says attackers wanted just to deface the site.
“In December 2011 and intermittently in November 2011, Colombotelegraph.com, a news and commentary website run by exiled Sri Lankan journalists, was also blocked with absolutely no justification provided by authorities,but is accessible as of early 2012.” the Freedom House, US based an independent watchdog said in its report on Freedom on the Net 2012. Click here to read the report.
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