Google, Facebook, ministries, Qatar Telecom and others are impacted

Oct 19, 2013 06:40 GMT  ·  By

The Syrian Electronic Army is back with another high-profile attack. This time, the pro-Assad group has hacked the Qatar Domains Registry (registry.qa) and altered the DNS records of several major domains.

The list of impacted websites is fairly long. It includes the .qa domains of Google, Vodafone, Facebook, Al Jazeera, Qatar Telecom, and Sheikha Mozah.

Domains of the following government and military organizations have also been defaced: Ministry of Foreign Affairs, the Qatar government portal, the Emir’s Palace, the Qatar Armed Forces, and the Ministry of Interior.

At the time of writing, the impacted sites are either still defaced or shut down altogether. I’ve asked the members of the Syrian Electronic Army about their motives for targeting Qatar. However, so far, they haven’t responded to my inquiry.

On the other hand, the motives for attacking Qatar are most likely political. This wouldn’t be the first time when the hacktivist group targets Qatar.

The hackers’ website contains a large number of documents that appear to have been leaked from various Qatar government organizations.

Update. The Syrian Electronic Army has told me that they've targeted Qatar because the country supports the terrorists in Syria.