Iraq Ayatollah's Website Hacked
By Steve Hynd Thursday Sep 18, 2008 11:50amCan you say "fatwa?" The Grand Ayatollah of Iraqi Shiites, Sayyid Ali Husaini al-Sistani, has had his website hacked by system crackers identifying themselves as “Group XP” and replaced by a video clip of US comedian Bill Maher making fun of said website.
Rock Richard of "Rock The Boat" and VetVoice brought this one to my attention, and writes:
It will be interesting to see the reaction to this in the Muslim world. Sistani is the most powerful Shia Cleric in Iraq, which pretty much means he is the most powerful, influential and respected person in that country. Once this story unravels and we see who is responsible (Western hackers? a rival Islamic group?) I would expect to see anything between strong rhetoric (best case scenario) and violent retaliation (worst case scenario).
The existence of email addresses ending with yahoo.com suggest Western hackers, though - and over at the Colorado Independent, Wendy Norris suggests it may be a badly thought out PR stunt.
The defaced site could well be a guerrilla marketing stunt to promote Maher’s new mockumentary “Religulous,” a scathing dissertation on faith that opens in theaters Oct. 3.
My guess is that "Group XP" might find themselves with more than just the FBI to be concerned with. Sistani is crucial to keeping the lid on in Iraq and I wouldn't be at all surprised if the new commander there, General Odierno, wasn't on the phone to the Pentagon shaking some of their own anti-hacker resources loose to help track the pranksters down.
Here's the clip that replaced Sistani's website:
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What I wanna know is what Sistani finds so offensive about chess. What's his reasoning behind that?
It's not a badly thought out PR stunt. I dont think too many Shia Muslims are interested in Maher's documentary.
It's clear from the video, half of it in Arabic, that Westerners are likely not behind it
Fuck Al-Sistani if he can't take a joke. Bunch of no sense of humor having mother fuckers.
the carpenter Says: Fuck Al-Sistani if he can’t take a joke. Bunch of no sense of humor having mother fuckers.
Fundies have no sense of humor.
Take a look at this country.
karen marie @ 1:
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Bin Laden should take responsibility for it. Let them declare fatwa on each other.
Lack of total control - that's the problem with using teh internets.
I think it's a shame your reaction to this is "OH NO, WE'RE GONNA GET A BEATING."
Not saying this against you specifically, really. But just the fact that what amounts to an insulting prank is considered an international concern. It feels like there's something wrong there.
Uh.. no, it doesn't. Do I need to find the actual numbers or will believe there are a lot more Iranians who know English than westerners who know Farsi?
Contrary perhaps to popular belief in the USA.. Iran has a lot of highly-educated people. Several hundred thousand bloggers. And many/most of them quite liberal.
I very much doubt it's a 'guerilla marketing stunt'. I can see how a non-techie journalist, for whom 'hacking' is a sort of magic, could think so. But in reality, most 'hacking' is more luck than anything else. You can't just 'hack' a site at will, even if you were the best in the world.
For once some hacking that I can agree with.
That is some funny shit, pun intended.
Wonder how this will play out on the right wing sites that went batshit crazy about hackers when they got Palins email?
Wonder what the password was? American Satan, Kill the infidel, ATM, cant wait to find out more.
Also cant wait to see Mahar's show this weekend for his take on this.
Punk@6, I listan to C-span every day. In the last year, the righties have been bombarding their phone lines. They are getting worse everyday. Some women claim they are former Hillary supporters and now back McCain. It's a lie. Remember when Limpballs had people switch registration to screw up the Primaries? This is an attempt to sway Independants. It's not working where I live.
Alexdem @ 10:
That's.. not true.
Meditating Upside-Down @ 2:
It's controversial even among Iranian clerics. The more extreme ones like Sistani think it might encourage gambling.
Legally, though, I don't think it's ever been banned there.
jehnx @ 14:
Gonna have to side with jehnx here. You may not be able to hack ANY site at will, but the number of sloppily managed and insecure sites out there is shocking.
karen marie @ 1:
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"Sayyid don't like it.
Rockin the casbah.
Rock the casbah!"
Alexdem @ 10:
€Punk @ 6:
I agree with most of your post, except for your last statement...I'm no hacker, but but from my understanding, a hacker with sufficient skill can hack damn near any site, whenever he/she/ they wish.
Well, I know one thing for sure. Obama just gave a hell of a speech down in Miami and it was all about women. Made me so damned proud that I am supporting him!
jehnx @ 14:
Yes.. it is.
Are you telling me you've discovered a fundamental flaw in the HTTP protocol that allows you remote-write access to any server?
Because that's the only thing that could compromise any and every web server in that kind of way. Anything else is a gamble that you can find some other kind of remote vulnerability, which is hardly guaranteed to be present. All software has bugs. That doesn't mean it's the kind required.
Anyone anywhere can make a Yahoo.com address.
Al-Quaramba!
A guerrilla marketing stunt for Maher's "Religulous"? That's a strong contender for the "Stupid Statement of the Day" award. Seriously, give me a break. Why would Maher or his people market his movie by hacking into an Iranian web site and posting a brief Real Time clip? In a country where "Religulous" will almost certainly not be playing, no less. Theorizing that Maher is involved in this just because a piece of his show is used in the video is asinine.
Meditating Upside-Down @ 2:
Generally when you are playing chess with someone you will be face to face. During anal intercourse (which he says is okay so long as the wife says, "Fine!") the man wouldn't be looking at the woman's face...Whaa???!
Oh, man... I'm worried for Bill Maher. I hope the Muslim world doesn't issue a fatwa against him like they did with Rushdie for this hacking.
Its a joke, go over to you tube. Some of comments are a year old and the guy who posted it says that it is joke.
It's those OBAMANOIDS again!!!
mcgramps and his camp can't even program a VCR
And never heard of a CD player
And think Bluetooths and Blu-Rays
Are competitors of Blue-Star ointment.
I seriously doubt it's PR stunt for "Religulous". Bill Maher is not stupid and certainly not this stupid.
I doubt it's a PR stunt... I bet it was done by someone who hates Bill Maher and hates Muslims.
They are going to get BIll Maher killed. Idiots.
But new Gallup. Obama up 5. 49-44.
I agree with you BT-I don't think this was a PR stunt.It is an irresponsible act perpetrated by idiots who haven't thought about the possible consequences-or don't give a rat's ass.
€Punk @ 6:
bubba @ 30:
I bet this was the intent...on Rachel Maddows show, he said most Americans are too stupid to be governed.
Methinks he may have pissed someone off, but good.
Nothing for Maher to gain from this. For as poorly considered it was, and looking like little more than snarky playing-out of shallow religious bigotries, it sounds more like a college Republicans or McCain campaign stunt to me. I don't think much will come of it, given that Al-Sistani has demonstrated himself to be a person of considerable patience and forebearance.
I notice that Sistani is silent on the issue of goats in the bedroom. What are we to make of this?
I really enjoy this sort of thing. Now, whomever was ingenious enough to hack Sistani's site, can you please apply those same talents to the websites of all sorts of Christian funamentalists? After the events of this week, we could all use a little entertainment...
Paul @ 34
Give me one Campus Republican or McCain surrogate with the patience to learn Arabic/Farsi.
Who cares? ALL these religious whackos should be made fun of...from the Ayatollahs, the ultra-orthodox Rabbi whacko calling the shots in Israel now, to the Pope and all the Evangelical nitwits in this country! Enough with the religious bullshit everywhere! If common sense doesn't prevail, superstitious claptrap will kill us all!
oy.
pinkobait @ 31:
Akin to Bush's "Bring 'em on" comment some years ago. Highly irresponsible and reckless, I agree.
Peter G @ 32:
Probably more than this European guy stuffing for the other side :^)
Wow - this whole piece was conjecture...
moving on...
Meditating Upside-Down @ 36:
You kiddin? A rethug learning a foregin language? They'd be ostracized!
Peter G @ 32:
First Bill Maher becomes the only person to be fired over 9/11.
Now he'll be the first American subject to a fatwah.
Something tells me Bill might not be so happy over this
liberalNmoderation @ 42:
Would help if most could read and write English first.
the carpenter@4
Oh yeah! Your'e a load of laughs.
Alexdem @ 21:
You're in over your head on this argument, man. Google my alias if you like. Also might want to re-read what you originally said: you didn't say that you someone/anyone could have "any" site at will; you said "You can’t just ‘hack’ a site at will." This, indeed, is incorrect, as a previous poster pointed out. Not every site is easily "hackable" -- luck is involved in some of them -- but my experience tells me that a very, very considerable amount of them are.
If you'd like to read further on this, let me know and I'll post some resources (several in print, one of which I was first author of which was funded and published through Cornell, and many hundreds more online).
fastfeat @ 45:
Nice!
fastfeat @ 43:
I saw Maher-le on Maddow's show last night. He did not look well - pasty and puffy - like he's a couple weeks or days away from a heart attack. It could have been the awful make-up job though. (:>
Why would god allow his servent's holy website be hacked!? Ohhhhh ... damn i'm just getting over Santa and the Easter Bunny then this ...
Peter G @ 32:
€Punk @ 6:
karen marie @ 1:
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Sounds like another excellent excuse for Christian terrorists and Islamic terrorists to rise up and slaughter some more innocent bystanders! Yeah, Jesus loves it when innocent children are sent home early.
wierd i cannot get the video to play,
toboi @ 52:
Edward @ 54:
If you are running Firefox3, it may be a Flash issue. It wouldn't play for me either.
liberalNmoderation @ 49:
Mawma fatwas hurt...
Abbybwood @ 25:
Don't worry. I'm Muslim. I can tell you that I have already issued a fetta with some pita for lunch.
Some of the comments on this blog are hilarious. They're akin to foreigners who say things like "money grows on trees in America" or "you Americans, all you do is eat Pizza Hut all day and drink Starbucks".
lol
Jay @ 55:
Peter G @ 32:
I'm tempted to think that this may rise above a "publicity stunt" or some bored crackers and move into a "wag the dog" type scenario. Now I don't buy into most of the conspiracy crap, but i've been involved in network/telecom security long enough to know when something doesn't look right. If you think about it, there is a whole list of people who would benefit by pissing this guy off and/or having more violence in Iraq (and i'm not only talking about Republicans).
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Timeing, it's the fasting month of Ramadan and religion gets talked about more and sites get visted a lot - the Imam's site has one very "interesting" fatwa called "Imamiya". He's the religious leader of over 100 death squads in Iraq and he runs the green zone to. The fatwa driveing the death squads has been the talk of the Islamic and Arabic satalite TV stations - he can not remove that fatwa without removing himself from power in Iraq, that fatwa makes his orders "holy" as the direct word of God and rejecting them punishiable by eternal hell, etc - his people have tried the hacker trick before but people now know how to use archive.org.
There are Two types of Shia - Iraq is Jafari Shia and have no problems with Sunnis, and the other kind is Iran's Safawi (Safavi) Shia and they curse and damn Sunnis as part of their worship.
The puppet government Bush installed in Iraq (and Afghanistan) is Safawi and this fatwas is vital to them - but the Jafari sect does not like it, and think death squads and killing others so they can invade their country is a bad idea, part of why Bush's death squads and army is killing them.
The internet is great for exposing the nasty fatwas. Sistani's site had to remove 3 other nasty fatwas before, but this one about Imamiya is too imporatant to remove becuase it places his "church" on top of the Iraqi government - no way he can remove it so removeing the site is the easy way out - I hope that fatwas is removed when the site is back, but I'm not holding my breath.
In short the fatwa says that all Muslims who refuse to belive in Sistani being the representaitve of the shia's missing Imam (almahdi) go to hell, it's called "Imamiya" - it's getting harder to find enough Iraqi Shia who belive it to run his death squads. The main problem is that while it is an easy fatwas to explain in Farsi, it is imposible to explain to Iraqis who know enough Arabic to read the Quran.
€Punk @ 6:
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World Traveler @ 58:
Ha!
Actually, money did grow on trees here for awhile, but that species was one of the first to go extinct in America. Since then, we've had to resort to printing lots and lots of money, made with cotton as well as wood, to make up for the loss of the American Money Tree...
I think you can spam this poll and I'm guessing some Palin supporters are doing that. If you hit refresh it tells you that if you want to refresh you'll have to send the data again. I've seen this before and I've totally manipulated a poll by just sitting there and refreshing a hundred times.
Been doing it for a little while with this poll but the NO% is going down.
Megan @ 64:
http://img.4chan.org/b/res/86197284.html
The "XP" in Group XP could stand for the Greek "Chi Re," the symbol for Christ. Could these hackers be fundies with an actual sense of humor?
You can be assured "heads will roll" over this one!
Brilliant!!!
Keep up the good work Group-XP!!
These bastards cut heads off with blunt knives, I say take out all their infrastructure
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ShotoJamf @ 35:
try this, Brick Testament, hilariously funny done with lego people
(Wow. What happened? Seems some culling went on in this thread.)
Anyway.. I talked to a persian friend and he thought persians were behind it too.
I support this product and/or service.
HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA LOL LOL
Everyone in the Arab world have a yahoo email, what are you talking about ? Yahoo email suggests nothing. even Iraqi government official sites for couple years used to use yahoo emails and I'm sure some of them still do.
I highly doubt westerners did that, I think Sunni Hackers from other Arab countries probably gulf countries, on Youtube you see they use Maher video to intimidate Shiites. because Maher is a tool, he left all the bad killer fatwa issuers and chose to pick on the guy who decided to try peace. Maher is just a comedian has no understanding, in fact before he cites some rules from Sistani and made a joke about it, but he cited them wrong. I know I read those all and understand them.
But I don't think anything will happen, this is nothing, Sunni vs Shiites "debating". normal. and if westerners, also nothing will happen, there are plenty of Arab hackers they try to hack western sites or Israeli sites and vice verse. just hackers playing around against each other. nothing turn off the lights really.
Ayatollahs have web sites? Who knew?
"Sistani is crucial to keeping the lid on in Iraq." Perhaps that is true. He is also crucial in keeping a lid on any hint of dissent in Iran. He is particularly good at depriving people of human rights or justice and keeping political opponents in a can. A man of many talents one might say.
too bad that the fundie got his fairy tale world rocked. the sunni's know this turncoat was getting medical treatment in england while the brits were helping bushco invade iraq.
Of course, Sistani is a fundie... but Maher, as usual, is making false comparisons. Shaking hands w/ a spouse would, of course, be permitted. I imagine Sistani's restriction on chess is because it's a Western pastime... and fundies have a restriction on acting or imitating non-believers.
grape @ 80:
Chess has its origins in central and west Asia. It's hardly a "western" invention.
It's a popular pastime in many parts of the Arab and Muslim world. Backgammon is also VERY popular.
It's not prohibited under Islam, by the way. It just so happens that this Sistani guy decided it was "bad for you" that he banned it and the only Muslims who'll end up following his guidance will be Shiites in his small circle of influence in Southern Iraq. Someone else has already mentioned earlier in the thread that Sistani probably did so because he feared Chess could lead to gambling.
It's not like if you went to say.....Syria and you asked someone to play chess with you that they will respond by saying "oh no....sorry....it is prohibited in Islam, so said Sistani".
Genius. Just think of all those thoroughly entertained Iraqis who stumbled upon this website during the two hours of electricity they enjoy every day. Before you know it, Maher will be touring the Burkka Belt Comedy Club circuit to sold-ould crowds.
the carpenter @ 4:
You dough nut, go learn about him and then speak you illiterate, un-educated fool. I am not muslim but I know about how pious he is. Probably has better manners than you.
World Traveler @ 81:
World Traveler @ 81:
Another fool just like carpenter, you know nothing about why he has prohibited it but yet you decide yourself fit to comment on such an issue. go find out through him or his assistants as to why he has said this, I can guarantee the guys more educated than you, since you know so much about where chess originated, I dare you, I dare you, please challenge him or one of his students or assistants about laws in Islam. For those guys who make comments without knowing anything, how stupid do you feel, seriously, look at yourselves and the mirror and realise how sad you truly are. What are your lives based on, commenting on issues you have no knowledge about. Your all wasted and need to take a long, hard look and contemplate on how rubbish your lives are.
By the way dont worry people, this hasn't caused such a stir. The same websites which were hacked were up and running the next day. Have a look at the other website of Ayatullah Seestani, it is up and running. It is nothing unusual and has already been forgotten about. Another day in the lives of peaceful individuals with a pack of wolves behind them, its no big deal to them. Shias and Sunnis are united around the world except where wahabbis and americans are involved. They cause the hate and separation.
Cernig, your a fool, please go learn something and educate your low and wavering mind. Keep it occupied, seriously, with useful info.
Wait...so if Bill Maher gets killed by one of these idiots suddenly some of you will recognize Islamic Extremism? That's what it will take? Bill F*ckin' Maher!?
Sistani's response:
"What the Fatwa? happened to my site?"
The person responsible for this should check out the lengthy article published in the Phoenix New Times in 2000 about the business career of James Hensley, Cindy McCain's father and then paste that on the McCain website; this is what the Senator refers to as "...an American success story".
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