Harvard University website compromised by Syrian hackers

According to British Broadcasting Co. (BBC), in what seems to be a sophisticated attack, the homepage of the official website of the Harvard University was hacked by Syrian hackers. These hackers reportedly uploaded a picture of the Syrian president, Bashar-al-Assad, on the website. As per the reports from BBC, there were some messages also that were posted on the homepage of the website. One of those messages stated, “SyRiAn eLeCTronic ArMy WeRe HeRE”.

It seems that the Harvard University website was hacked by the so called supporters of the Syrian president. Report from the BBC says that the picture showed President Assad in a military uniform, standing in front of the national flag of Syria. This picture was linked to another picture of Syrian national colors with a message written over it, accusing the United States for the involvement in the uprising against the Syrian president. There were other messages too; one of which made terror threats against the United States for supporting the uprising against President Assad.

BBC has quoted a Harvard spokesman saying, “The University’s homepage was compromised by an outside party this morning. We took down the site for several hours in order to restore it. The attack appears to have been the work of a sophisticated individual or group.”

He said that there has been a rise in the occurrence of such attacks off lately. Hacking groups are getting more offensive and targeting news media, government, and education websites.

But, there is a deeper message in this episode. Even websites, as secure as that of Harvard, are not safe today from cyber attacks despite of having in-depth security mechanisms at place. Cyber attacks are on an all time rise and this definitely is a worry for government agencies about the safety of important and restricted websites.