Case

Hackers deface Google Pakistan

In November 2012, Google’s Pakistan page was hacked and defaced by Turkish hackers who name “box”. The hackers replaced Google’s logo with a picture of two penguins walking up a bridge at sunset.

Nowadays, Google is the most popular and common search engine for people. This defaced only appeared on the Pakistan subsite for the search engine, www.Google.com.pk. It means that who access to Google from Pakistan will usually redirect to this portal. The hackers also left a message in Turkish on the vandalised Google Page:

“Eboz of a friend always there for me My homies have not shot by me with every breath”

The hackers also added the line “Downed Pakistan” to confirmed that  the webpage had been taken down. While, at the bottom of the page, the hackers added a big question mark followed by the tag line in Turkish:

“Hello, friends who are still alive, not dead!”

So, the site ‘www.Google.com.pk’ was subsequently inaccessible to users.

In my opinion, as Pakistan grows more connected, they must focus on shifting towards securing people who manage to establish an electronic link between themselves and the rest of the world. Besides that, Pakistan also must implement a proper cyber law and it should include the laws which to against poorly coded and insecure websites. For example, United States has provided the Computer Fraud and Abuse Act, which created a criminal offence for conspiring to commit a computer hacking offence under section 1030.

Published in The Express Tribune, November 25th, 2012.