JEDDAH, 14 June — “You have been hacked”. That was the message which popped up when one logged on to the official Gulf News online site yesterday. The attack raised alarms of a possible eruption of a web war with Israel, as the hacker’s imprint on the Gulf News site indicated.
An Israeli flag and another cryptic line — You were owned by Senodyne — were the messages which briefly flashed on the newspaper’s online edition yesterday. Gulf News, one of the premier newspapers published in Dubai, later shut down their online edition after Arab News informed them that their site had been attacked.
Francis Matthew, Gulf News’ editor, said yesterday: “We believe it is a Zionist group based in South Africa using the resources from an Israeli web server which perpetuated the attack.”
“We believe it is a fairly sophisticated hacking attack from a group which has been active for sometime. It is a relatively high-profile hacking effort,” he added. “We are shocked by this attack. We closed down our website as soon as the intrusion was detected. An investigation into the breach is under way,” he said.
Matthew believes that the extensive coverage of the Israeli atrocities, both in news and opinion, in Palestine and the West Bank could have triggered the attack on the website, which is hosted in the United States. He emphasized that “we hope to resume our online edition soon after an extensive review of security arrangements.”
Forrest Cassidy, the web editor of the online edition, confirmed that this was the first time that the online edition had been hacked since its inception about five years ago. He also said that the site had been redesigned just last November and protection had been upgraded.
The attack will in all probability spark renewed interest in online security. Mirza Asrar Baig, CEO of IT Matrix, explained yesterday that security is a process and not a product. And organizations and people should be made aware of this fact.
“Security of a site should be viewed as no different from that of a company. It is an ongoing process. We should always expect an attack from hackers, and we should be ready with a response,” he said
“With regards to the Gulf News online edition attack, their erection of firewalls was a good strategy. But nothing is 100 percent secure. In every security model you need live monitoring,” he said. “If this is not done then there is every chance of one getting hacked. It is like a bank which has all the cameras and alarms in place. But unless there are security people keeping watch over the bank premises, all the tools will be of no avail,” he added.
Baig said that firewalls, in effect, take care of 15 to 20 percent of one’s security concerns. But a large window is still open. Continued monitoring and latest intrusion detection tools would help in staving off an attack. “The best option now is outsourcing your security concerns, and continued vigil,” he said.
