The official government websites of many countries of the world have been hacked in recent months, from the United States to Syria.
Now apparently for the first time, government sites in Uzbekistan have been defaced, regnum.ru and uzdaily.uz reported.
Websites of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, Ministry of External Economic Liasions, Investment and Trade and the Jahon information agency of the Foreign Ministry were all attacked by hackers on July 28.
Interestingly, only the Russian version of these sites, which are also available in Uzbek, Arabic, and English, were the pages subject to tampering. Their regular texts were substituted with a banner:
"By xTerror [email protected] S.A.Geeks".
The web cache of the Council of Ministers of Karakalpakstan still shows the defaced page, where a picture of masked young men carrying a black flag with an inscription -- evidently the Saudi flag but with the black color used by Al Qaeda -- can be seen and the phrase in English "Down by xTerror." One of the youths is wearing a hooded sweatshirt with the logo "Facebook."
The Uzbek government had no comment about the attacks, and by July 29, the sites were back in order.
A similar hacker's handle was used recently in the defacement of the website of the National Disaster Risk Reduction and Management Council (NDRRMC) in the Philippines.
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