Hackers with a pro-Palestinian message hijacked the corporate websites of McDonald’s, the Water Services Corporation and an app for the Farsons’ Great Beer Festival on Wednesday.
The group, who identified themselves as Rebel Team Hackers, struck at around 10pm and posted a message on the fast-food chain’s website which read: “Tell your government to know about Palestine! We don’t accept killing Muslims everywhere, stop killing US! And we will not end this war will be for us Insha Allah!”
Writing in Arabic accompanied the message (see box).
A spokeswoman for McDonald’s confirmed the incident. “There was a very brief intrusion on the McDonald’s Malta website on Wednesday evening. The website was restored shortly afterwards.”
She did not elaborate on how serious the hack was but a spokesman for the Water Services Corporation played down the event. “Anyone with some time on his hands could have done something like this,” the WSC spokesman said.
He said no data was compromised since only the website was hacked and no servers were affected. The issue was resolved within a few minutes, he added.
An app for Farsons’ Great Beer Festival was also targeted in a different way. Upon accessing the app, songs in Arabic could be heard.
Farsons said that, while it considered any sort of hacking as serious, it was the external supplier which hosts the app that was hacked and not Farsons itself.
IT and digital media expert Martin Debattista said he was not familiar with the hacking team claiming responsibility and explained that one would have to look into whether it was just the website that was hacked or the company’s entire server before being able to determine the extent of the threat.
claire.caruana@timesofmalta.com
The message in Arabic
The Arabic text that accompanied the message by the hacking team is known as shahada. It is an Islamic creed which states that there is only one God and Mohammed. It is a testimony one recites when converting to Islam and it is a phrase Muslims commonly use in the daily prayers as it is regarded as a declaration of faith.