A government website operated by the United States was defaced, allegedly by hackers in Iran . The hackers stated the hack was initiated in retaliation for President Donald Trump’s drone strike in Iraq that claimed the life of Quds Force commander Qassem Soleimani, as BNO News tweeted. The defaced page has since been taken offline.
The website was run by the small and relatively unknown Federal Depository Library Program. The agency seeks to make federal publications available to the public for free, and appears to have been an easy target for the hackers.
The homepage was replaced with several images and several paragraphs of text. At the top was a picture of the Iranian flag.
At the top of the page read “in the name of god [sic]” with “Islamic Republic of Iran” written underneath. An image of the Iranian flag was beside it.
“This is message [sic] from the Islamic Republic of Iran,” the message began.
“We will not stop supporting our friends in the region: the oppressed people of Palestine, the oppressed people of Yemen, the people of the Syrian government, the people and government of Iraq, the oppressed people of Bahrain, the true mujahideen of Lebanon and Palestine; [they] will always be supported by us,” it concluded.
Two other images were placed beside the text. One was an image of Iran’s supreme leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei waving to the public.
The second was an image of President Trump being punched in the jaw by an arm clothed in the Iranian Revolutionary Guard uniform. Blood runs out of Trump’s mouth due to the assault, and beneath the Art of the Deal author are the images of two missiles.
BREAKING: U.S. government website operated by the Federal Depository Library Program hacked and defaced by “Iranian hackers” pic.twitter.com/PtkLL9qovT
— BNO News (@BNONews) January 5, 2020
“Martyrdom was his (Sahid Solemanni) reward for years of implacable efforts. With his departure and with God’s power, his work and path will not cease and severe revenge awaits those criminals who have tainted their filthy hands with his blood and the blood of the other martyrs of last night’s incident,” the page read on the bottom.
The second paragraph is a direct quote from the Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, who made the comments after vowing vengeance on the United States after the decisive military strike, as previously reported by The Inquisitr .
The hacking technique appeared to be nearly identical to the attack on the website of the Sierra Leone Commercial Bank, which was again claimed by a group claiming to be Iranian hackers, according to The Daily Mail .
However, some journalists and politicos are warning that it is not verified that Iranian hackers are behind the attack.
Yashar Ali, a popular Twitter personality and columnist for The HuffPost , specifically highlighted the word “claiming” in his tweet on the matter.
Looks like a group *claiming* to be Iranian hackers has hacked the Federal Depository Library Program website at https://t.co/Q4uzvBg1RO
It’s been shut down for now pic.twitter.com/FbdPwKs247
— Yashar Ali ? ????? (@yashar) January 5, 2020
The U.S. government has likewise not confirmed the identity of the hackers.
This is not the first time that Iran has attempted to launch a cyber attack against the U.S. As previously reported by The Inquisitr , hackers linked to the country tried to compromise the U.S. presidential election. Fortunately, they were unsuccessful.
