The Iranian Cyber War on Twitter

Twitter is down again but this time it may be the result of an explicit attack similar to the one that took down Facebook and Twitter a few months ago. Has a group of Iranian hackers dubbed the ‘Iranian Cyber Army’ waged war on Twitter? Techcrunch reports…

We’ve received multiple tips right around 10 pm that Twitter was hacked and defaced with the message below. The site is currently offline. We’re looking into this and waiting on a response from Twitter.

The message reads:

Iranian Cyber Army

THIS SITE HAS BEEN HACKED BY IRANIAN CYBER ARMY

[email protected]

U.S.A. Think They Controlling And Managing Internet By Their Access, But THey Don’t, We Control And Manage Internet By Our Power, So Do Not Try To Stimulation Iranian Peoples To….

NOW WHICH COUNTRY IN EMBARGO LIST? IRAN? USA?

WE PUSH THEM IN EMBARGO LIST

Take Care.

Update December 19: If the attack on Twitter had been an attack on AT&T or the U.S. power grid, it would have probably been considered an act of terrorism: It was an attack, by a politically motivated group, claiming to have political ties making a political statement by deliberately assaulting a communications platform in an act of defiance against another nation. Again, TechCrunch writes:

There is a history between Iran and Twitter. It was well noted and covered in the media that Twitter was used as a tool during the Iranian election protests. The US government actually intervened to assure that Twitter was available to the protestors in Tehran and around the country. This attack may be an act of reprisal from groups who were not happy with the role that Twitter played during the protests.

The famous Estonia Hack Attack of 2007 crippled an entire countries banking system, sending the economy reeling for nearly an entire month. In that case it was very much an effective, politically motivated attack by Russian hackers looking to do as much damage as possible to a perceived enemy. We’ve entered a new age of terrorism (cyber terrorism or terrorism 2.0) was Twitter just a victim?