Voice of America Site Forced Offline By 'Iranian Cyber Army'

angry tapir writes with this excerpt from TechWorld: "The pro-Iran hacktivist group that defaced the Baidu and Twitter Web sites a year ago has hit another target: the US Government's Voice of America news site. Voice of America was knocked offline temporarily after hackers were able to change the organization's DNS (Domain Name System) settings, redirecting Web traffic hitting Voice of America sites to another site controlled by the hackers."

Comments

How is this a hack?

[Anonymous Coward]

Changing DNS doesn't exactly seem like a hack. And it's not new. When will DNS registrars learn?

Breaking into domain name registration accounts and redirecting Web sites is a favorite tactic of the Cyber Army, and it has pulled off this attack numerous times in recent years. The group posted similar messages in the Twitter and Baidu incidents.

Here's what they have at the end of the article:

"It isn't a hack or a breach of Network Solutions services," he said. "The DNS was changed and we helped the customer reset it."

Fail Network Solutions. Fail.

Re:Well, you got to feel pity for them

[mjwx]

So, lets give the Iran cyber army its last few twitches before this guy will be in front of the firing squad for his allegiance to a overthrown regime.

But this wont happen.

Iran will democatise in the next 5-10 years, due entirely to a large young population that Iran's theocratic government hasn't had to deal with for the last 20 years (most of Iran's youth was wiped out in the Iran-Iraq war) but it wont be a revolution.

Iran's government is perfectly designed to weather this kind of thing. First off, the Islamic council aren't dumb, not in the slightest. The protests in mid last year were met mainly with subterfuge and false flag operations (sound familiar). Secondly they've isolated the military and police in this. They use the Republican Guard which are primarily non-Iranian Arabs (Iran is mostly Persian in ethnicity) who are loyal to the government and not attached to the people. Thirdly the power structure is not centred around a single person (president mahmoud whatisname) he's just a puppet, a front man to keep the real rulers (Islamic Council) safe.

Actual change will take time, there is not enough pressure yet for the majority of Persians to feel the need for change. This pressure will build over time however if a violent revolution were to occur today, it would just cause most Persians to rally around the government for security, isolating the youth (making things worse). The Iranian government isn't a brutal dictator like Gadafi or an incompetent embezzling oaf like Mubarak. They are cold and calculating, much like the Soviets.

When Iran does finally democratise it will be very good for us, the western world for two reasons. 1. Persians have westernised quite easily, even in Iran today there is a growing middle class who like the same things we do (nice cars, houses, consumer electronics). 2. There are a metric crapload of Persians who left Iran after the Islamic revolution currently living in the US, Australia and Israel, mostly Baha'i, Zorrostrians and a few Jews. Compared to these religions the Persian Christians have been well treated but they were never a big group to begin with. Iran should be our biggest ally in the ME, but we screwed that one when we deposed the legitimately elected government and put that idiot Reza on the throne.