High profile websites belonging to Google, Yahoo, eBay, Apple, and others were downed over the weekend by attacks.
The websites, all of which had .pk for Pakistan domain names, mostly had their usual content replaced with a photo of two penguins and the text "Pakistan downed". Some others had only one penguin, while according to reports there were variations on the text.
Hundreds of websites with .pk domain names were defaced, all because hackers were able to exploit one vulnerability across all of them, according to Pakistani news website Propakistani.pk. That vulnerability can be traced back to PKNIC, the local domain name admin and a group called Eboz, that, according to reports, comes from Turkey.
It looks like some of the websites, including Google.pk, were offline for around 18 hours. We have contacted PKNIC and are waiting for a response.
Twitter commentators suggested that it was the domain administrators' database that was hacked, making the defacement of hundreds of websites a relatively easy task.
With no real message, unless you really like penguins, it looks like the defacements were done for the heck of it. However, last week a number of Israeli websites were attacked by hackers claiming to have come from Pakistan.
One name that pops up is Kripteks, and a search for that moniker on Zone H brings up a list of defaced .pk websites.
There mirrors are provided for the defaced websites, and it is there that we read that some had the text, translated from Turkish, "My homies in a friend always there for me. Have not shot by me with every breath." We have no idea what that means.
This article was originally published on the Inquirer.
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