Anonymous hijacks Syria's government pages

http://mod.gov.sy/

by jimmyjim • 15 years ago

349 47 15 years ago

mod.gov.sy

shpoonj• 15 years ago

Bravo.

I don't think there's anything more to say.

lightyrs• 15 years ago

Great production values.

8ig8• 15 years ago

jessica_moyer• 15 years ago

Exciting!

lotharbot• 15 years ago

The text loads slowly. It actually freezes if you're in another tab, which IMO is a poor implementation decision; it means you actually have to sit and watch it come on the screen word by word.

For those who either don't want to wait for it to load, or didn't get to it before it got taken down, here's what it says:

--------------------------

To the Syrian people: The world stands with you against the brutal regime of Bashar Al-Assad. Know that time and history are on your side - tyrants use violence because they have nothing else, and the more violent they are, the more fragile they become. We salute your determination to be non-violent in the face of the regime's brutality, and admire your willingness to pursue justice, not mere revenge. All tyrants will fall, and thanks to your bravery Bashar Al-Assad is next.

To the Syrian military: You are responsible for protecting the Syrian people, and anyone who orders you to kill women, children, and the elderly deserves to be tried for treason. No outside enemy could do as much damage to Syria as Bashar Al-Assad has done. Defend your country - rise up against the regime! - Anonymous

-------------------------

Once the text has loaded, it links to several revolutionary sites, and also scrolls images across the top that apparently link to youtube videos.

asifjamil• 15 years ago

i agree - you've got javascript doing both of the text animations, plus the huge graphics and scrolling images.

randomanonymous2• 15 years ago

Loaded for me fine in less than 2 seconds and I'm on a 150kb/s connection.

kaichanvong• 15 years ago

Kids these days huh! Never knowing when and when not to use javascript and how to implement things in the most accessible manner.

Wonder how well it worked on IE6 and how many Syrian people run that browser or the latest ones...

Anyone have any stats?

muxxa• 15 years ago

IE6 8.53%

http://gs.statcounter.com/#browser_version-SY-monthly-201007...

hackly• 15 years ago

Fyi, mod = ministry of defense

adammichaelc• 15 years ago

In case you don't want to wait for the page to load, here's what you'll see:

http://postimage.org/image/75ivivdw/

The actual text:

yarian• 15 years ago

Make sure you wget :)

yannis• 15 years ago

good idea!

adrianwaj• 15 years ago

Kudos. I am hoping Anon do more than just deface for moral support, but actually ruin and undermine as much of their systems as possible.

XLcommerce• 15 years ago

How are people in Syria accessing the net? If it's mostly mobile and/or ie6 then I hope this was tested on those platforms.

burgerbrain3• 15 years ago

Well it works great on android at least.

sage_joch• 15 years ago

The page is nearly unresponsive. If the idea is for the Syrian people to see it, this is an unfortunate side effect of being on the top of Reddit/HN.

redthrowaway2• 15 years ago

Mirror's here: http://zone-h.org/mirror/id/14599065

moe• 15 years ago

Better link (without the frameset): http://zonehmirrors.net/defaced/2011/08/08/mod.gov.sy/

redthrowaway2• 15 years ago

The traffic seems to have killed the site. Here's a mirror showing what it looked like when it was still responsive:

http://zone-h.org/mirror/id/14599065

niels_olson• 15 years ago

dear anonymous, thanks. Please do libya also. And if you could access their fire control systems, I have friends who could make use of that access.

randomanonymous2• 15 years ago

Agent Provocateur....

NEPatriot• 15 years ago

could also do something about www.house.gov

yaix2• 15 years ago

This is a very good hack and also a reminder for Western countries and political actors that these kind of break-ins are not necessarily criminals acts but may be political demonstrations. If a break-in is non-destructive and has as motivation a political demonstration, in a democracy it should be treated as such and not be brushed aside as "criminal".

corin_• 15 years ago

It's far too easy to jump to "if the non-digital equivilent happened.." comparisons without realising that they don't actually line-up right.

If I broke onto an MoD base in person, no matter how little damage I did or how much my motivation was politically driven, I'd be arrested pretty damn quick. And I'm talking about countries like the UK/US, not Syria.

yaix2• 15 years ago

Greenpeace did that lots of times. They usually went straight to the roof of the company building and unrolled a large sign with their protest text ("{companyname} polutes {someplace} with {somesubstance}" etc.

The beginnings of protests try to call attention for a cause. It gets media attention and people notice it. Now people know and can actually support the cause. If it can get a majority, the initial "illegal action" changed the law by forcing the government to react to what people actuallt want.

That's the essence of democracy: to make the government do what the people want and not the other way around.

I am really surprised (not positively) that this sparked a big discussion.

yid3• 15 years ago

A break-in, by definition, is criminal regardless of the motivation. This would be like breaking into city hall to stage a protest -- the protest part is democratic, the break-in part is criminal.

Tsagadai• 15 years ago

The Syrian government has already said the protests are illegal. So if we follow pure logic, they are all criminals and should be locked up. This comes back to a fundamental question of democracy, who owns the government?

danenania2• 15 years ago

How about when the folks making the laws are criminals?

Perhaps we should be more concerned with right and wrong than following the rules.

burgerbrain3• 15 years ago

If you consider this criminal, then I consider "criminal" to be a merit-less allegation.

JDulin• 15 years ago

Well done Anonymous. Although it may seem like an empty gesture based on what the U.S. government has (or hasn't) done.

BasDirks• 15 years ago

Anon is not buddies with the US gov. Anon does what it can do.

dkersten• 15 years ago

I can't load the page so don't know if the text was in English only or also in Arabic. I was in Syria in October 2009 on business and.. about 80% (or perhaps even higher) of the population did not speak any English, so this text isn't going to help much.

EDIT: Ok, I see from the mirror that it is in both English and Arabic.

ordinary• 15 years ago

There are 3 links to mirrors or images in this thread. It would have been trivial to find out that the text was both in English and Arabic.

Ideka• 15 years ago

And now it seems Syrian "hackers" defaced Anon+. http://anonplus.com/

Anonymous hijacks Syria's government pages

Related Stories