Intelligence Service: Romanian sites face rise in cyber-attacks launching radical Islamist, anti-Israel, pro-Palestine messages

Beginning with mid-December 2014, the sites of several Romanian higher education and public administration institutions have been the target of cyber-attacks, the Romanian Intelligence Service (SRI) announced on Friday, mentioning that the hacked sites were infiltrated to carry radical Islamist, anti-Israeli and pro-Palestinian messages, with the site of the Romanian Patriarchate being among the targets.

Photo credit: (c) Cristian NISTOR / AGERPRES ARCHIVE

"Against the background of actions by global hacktivist groups, there has been an increased frequency in cyber-attacks on computer systems belonging to public or private entities in Romania, promoting, among others, Islamist propaganda messages. Such aggressor entities permanently seek to identify cybersecurity vulnerabilities to take advantage of either immediately, or depending on the circumstances. In Romania, cyber-attacks have been identified since mid-December 2014 against websites belonging to higher education and public administration institutions. The respective sites were hacked to carry radical Islamist, anti-Israeli and pro-Palestinian messages," SRI spokesman Sorin Sava said in a press release.

According to Sava, another incident that got into media attention occurred between January 9 and January 12, 2015, when the hacker group Security Crewz released defacement attacks against websites belonging to public institutions, associations and companies in Romania.

"These attacks have affected the integrity and availability of content, promoting pro-Caliphate ideological messages. We mention that between December 2014 ? January 2015, Security Crewz claimed similar successful attacks against roughly 300 targets in Europe, the USA and the United Arab Emirates. A similar attack,...