Baidu website hijacked by Iranian Muslim extremists

From: Tanki <5191...@gmail.com>
Subject: Baidu website hijacked by Iranian Muslim extremists

BEIJING (Dow Jones)--Baidu Inc. (BIDU), China's top search engine, was
unavailable early Tuesday in China, and some Internet users reported
seeing signs of an attack on the site by Iranian hackers.

Users reported seeing a banner for the "Iranian Cyber Army," complete
with an Iranian flag and a shattered star of David, when they tried to
access Baidu's homepage Tuesday.

Marten Strassburg, a Swedish citizen living in Beijing, said he saw
the site defaced with the Iranian group's logos around 10:30a.m.
Beijing time (9:30 p.m. Monday EST). Strassburg and dozens of others
posted screen shots of Baidu's defaced site online.

As of 11:30 a.m., Baidu was still unavailable, with users seeing just
an error message when they attempted to visit the site. As of noon,
the site was accessible.

Baidu spokeswoman Cynthia He declined to immediately comment, saying
the company is looking into the matter.

Last month, a group also calling itself the Iranian Cyber Army
attacked Twitter, temporarily disrupting access to U.S.-based social
networking site. The Iranian Cyber Army also appeared to have attacked
an Iranian reformist Web site.

It was unclear why the group, which appears to sympathize with the
Iranian government rather than anti-Tehran protesters, would attack
Baidu.

Twitter has famously become a tool for Iranian dissidents to
communicate and organize, and Chinese citizens began expressing
sympathy with Iranian protesters last month through Twitter. Though
Twitter is blocked in China, these Internet users have found ways
around the limits through use of proxy servers outside of China.

But the Internet free speech advocates on Twitter are not fans of
Baidu, which is seen as in good standing with Beijing. Foreign Web
sites such as Google Inc. (GOOG) have been periodically blocked by the
Chinese government for linking to pornographic or politically
sensitive material, but Baidu has not had similar problems with
Chinese censors.