Hackers attack Bahrain media group's sites

Hackers attacked this week four of five websites run by a Bahrain-based media group, for as yet unknown reasons. The Gulf Daily News (GDN) said the hackers, who called themselves the "Delta Hacking Team" and appeared to be from Iran, planted files on its servers. "A group calling itself the Delta Hacking Team tried to hack the GDN's website, along with four other publications belonging to our parent group Al Hilal, on Tuesday," it said. While the hackers failed to tamper with GDN's website, "they did plant files on one of our servers that have since been removed." "However, they succeeded in changing the homepages of four other publications, replacing them with a map of the region and labelling it as the Persian Gulf," GDN said. Trade Arabia webmaster Francis Pangilinan said Al Hilal's IT team worked overnight on Tuesday to ensure minimal disruption. Pangilinan, who is in charge of monitoring and updating Al Hilal websites including the GDN, said the hacking happened on Tuesday at 1 p.m. He said that he discovered their attempt to hack the GDN as four other websites had been hit. "The hackers changed the sites' main pages and placed a message with their name and a picture of the Arabian Gulf, naming it the Persian Gulf. They were not successful in changing the GDN's homepage, as it has been secured well to protect it from such attempts," he said. GDN said the files left by the hackers were programmed to replicate themselves on the folder structure of the site, but Pangilinan said visitors did not sense such changes. "We have been working all night to ensure this doesn't affect the GDN site," he said. The GDN said it receives an average of 32,793 visits a day to its website, which recorded 16 million page views last month alone. But it noted some users have faced viewing difficulties since the start of the week due to an update of the Internet Explorer browser by Microsoft. It advised IE users experiencing problems viewing the site to select "compatibility view" in the Tools menu or switch to other browsers such as Firefox or Chrome. Iranian hackers? GDN said that the Delta Hacking Team behind Tuesday's attack may be Iranian, based on messages left on other sites it has targeted. "Another clue is the map left on four Al Hilal websites identifying the region as the Persian Gulf - a name still used by Iran, despite the GCC calling it the Arabian Gulf," it said. — TJD, GMA News