Appearing from Islamabad, Karachi, Lahore, Peshawar, Muzaffarabad & Quetta

Saturday, August 15, 2009, Sha'aban 23, 1430

Several govt sites hacked

Akhtar Jamal

Islamabad—Unidentified hackers on Friday hacked several Pakistan government sites including web sites and posted messages of their own.

The sites which were hacked included www.pak.gov.pk; www.infopak.gov.pk and www.pakistan.gov.pk. The FIA’s Cyber Crime Cell was unable to restore the hacked sites by Friday night by the time of our going to press.

The hackers which called themselves as “Pak Bugs” posted the following messages on the hacked web sites: “Happy Independence Day” and “We don’t need an intro, you guys already know us.”

Another message says “The NOTORIOUS PAK BUGS ARE BACK” while one government site was pasted with a message “This time we are here to greet all Pakistanis on the memorable day”. All the web sites hacked by Pak Bugs were posted with messages of “Pakistan Zindabad”.

When this correspondent called FIA to inquire about hacking of government sites the FIA helpline gave a number of Cyber Crime Wing 9240912. When this correspondent called FIA’s Cyber Crime Wing at given number there was a recording: “the number you dialled is not responding at the moment.....a short message will be sent to subscriber you called when available.”

According to web experts Pak Bugs has a history of hackings Indian and other international sites in the past and call themselves as Pakistani nationalists.

The Pak Bugs group also remained engaged with Indian hackers in an India-Pakistan cyber-war soon after Mumbai and forced the Indians to reach an accord in November 2008 pledging not to hack each others’ sites. Soon after the Mumbai attack Indian hackers had hacked dozens of Pakistani sites and in response Pak Bugs hacked over three dozen Indian sites.

 

Editor Foreign Affairs:

Editor:

Executive Editor:

GM Marketing:

Karachi

Lahore

Peshawar