Twitter Survives Attack of the “Iranian Cyber Army”

Tweet

In case you were not aware of it, Twitter has been the target of some Iranian hackers last night. Nothing has been irreversibly destroyed and Twitter is currently working as initially expected. The API did not fall in the wrong hands so you can Tweet ahead all you want as order has been restored in the universe.

Here’s what the message on Twitter’s site said before being removed:

Iranian Cyber Army

THIS SITE HAS BEEN HACKED BY IRANIAN CYBER ARMY

iRANiAN.CYBER.ARMY@GMAIL.COM

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.

It looks rather dangerous but according to Twitter’s official page, it was nothing more than a DNS hijack:

As we tweeted a bit ago, Twitter’s DNS records were temporarily compromised tonight but have now been fixed. As some noticed, Twitter.com was redirected for a while but API and platform applications were working. We will update with more information and details once we’ve investigated more fully.

It looks like some Iranian fellows are not happy with Twitter and the role it had in the recent Iranian election protests. That seems to be the simplest explanation although the reasons behind such an attack might be others and should be seriously dealt with by the appropriate authorities.

Let’s not forget that Twitter is a social networking tool that is currently used by millions around the world. It’s not a political weapon, although it can be used to express one’s views including political beliefs and everyone should be free to use it as they please, within reason. Therefore it’s really wrong to try and punish Twitter for everything that was written in tweets about Iran at some point in the past. And while we’re at it, it’s even worse trying to punish the people that are using Twitter to express their opinions. Not that it really worked anyway, as Twitter is back online, fully functional.

What about you, did you notice any irregularities with your Twitter account?