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Lizard Squad 'compromises' Malaysia Airlines website

Malaysia Airlines is still trying to recover from two disasters last year

Roisin O'Connor
Monday 26 January 2015 09:01 GMT
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The official Malaysia Airlines website has been "compromised" by a group claiming to be the Lizard Squad.

Officials have been struggling to restore the website after it was hacked to feature a message reportedly proclaiming support for Isis.

At the time of writing the site featured a message saying "404 – Plane Not Found" followed by "Hacked by LIZARD SQUAD – OFFICIAL CYBER CALIPHATE", a picture of a lizard wearing a monocle and a top hat, and several Twitter handles.

Media reports said versions of the takeover in some regions included the wording "ISIS will prevail". It is unclear why Malaysia Airlines has been targeted.

Last year the Lizard Squad group took credit for attacks on Sony’s online PlayStation network and Microsoft’s Xbox site.

Malaysia Airlines said in a statement that its domain name system had been "compromised" and that users were being redirected to the Lizard Squad website. It predicted that it would take up to 22 hours to be restored and assured customers and clients that its website was not hacked, calling it a "temporary glitch".

However on the Lizard Squad’s Twitter account they released their own "media statement" and claimed that @MAS (Malaysia Airlines) was "lying about user data not being compromised".

In the post before the group linked to the Malaysia Airlines site they had tweeted that they were "cooking up something special".

Additional reporting by AP

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