Hackers protest US, Israeli actions on UN website

UNITED NATIONS (AFP) - The official website of the United Nations appeared to have been hacked yesterday and briefly displayed a message protesting US and Israeli policies in the Middle East.

The section of the site reserved to statements by Secretary General Ban Ki-moon showed a message, repeated several times, that read: "Hacked By kerem125 M0sted and Gsy That is CyberProtest Hey Ysrail and Usa dont kill children and other people Peace for ever No war."

The message also appeared on other web pages that usually display quotes and speeches from the secretary general.

The pirate message disappeared from the UN website, www.un.org, at about 9:15 am (1315 GMT).

Ban's spokesperson was not available for comment.

Previous attacks attributed to the hackers found on other websites suggested that at least one of them was Turkish.

Citing the hacker names that appeared on the UN site, the www.m0sted.org website says CyberProtest's objective is to say "that the powerful have no right to oppress the powerless."

The move, it says, was launched by Eno7 and the Byond Crew Hack Team and is now continued by three hackers -- kerem125, m0sted and gsy.

"I hope we will be successful as well," it says.

The website lists a number of institutions whose websites the trio had also allegedly hacked, including Harvard University, the UN Environment Programme and industrial giants Toyota and Nestle.

The kerem125.com website is not accessible at the moment.

Eno 7, who describes himself/herself as an IT security expert, says on his/her website that CyberProtest was launched after the Israeli offensive against Lebanon last year.

"The chief architects of this protest are myself, Eno 7 from Turkey, and the byond hackers team from Chile ... We expanded our efforts as nine other countries joined us afterwards," it says.

The group decided to target important institutions rather than random websites "because our objective was not to disrupt the sites and leave stupid messages ... but only to give a message against war," it says.

The website gives a long list of institutions whose Internet sites were allegedly hacked with an anti-war message, among them giants such as Yahoo Korea, MSN Italy, Coca Cola, Sony, Renault and Toyota as well as several US and Israeli universities.