AVG, producers of one of the world’s most popular free anti-virus products, was apparently hacked by a Palestinian group earlier today, and antivirus company Avira was affected too.
According to security expert Graham Cluley, visitors to AVG’s web site after the attack ran into a deface page that had “a patriotic rendition of the Palestinian national anthem (courtesy of an embedded YouTube video) and a message from a group calling itself ‘KDMS Team'”.
The AVG has recovered but Avira is still down.
The deface page stated:
MISSION COMPLETED HACKED KDMS TEAM PLAESTINIAN HACKERS Hello World We Are Here To Deliver Tow Messages First one: we want to tell you that there is a land called Palestine on the earth this land has been stolen by Zionist do you know it ? Palestinian people has the right to live in peace Deserve to liberate their land and release all prisoners from israeli jails we want peace long live Palestine Second Message: There Is No Full Security We Can Catch You ! Hacked by KDMS team Now .. We Will Quit Hacking
Graham Cluley speculates that it is “possible that the hackers managed to change the AVG website’s DNS record, redirecting anyone who attempted to visit www.avg.com to a different IP address” and therefore there’s nothing for customers to worry about at the moment.
The same group earlier also took down Whatsapp.com, but that site is back up and running normally now.
AVG is now claim that their DNS provider was was breached and had their DNS modified, “AVG can confirm today that it has had a select number of online properties defaced as a result of our domain name system (DNS) registrar being compromised. A number of other companies appear to have been faced with the similar issue. The situation is being further monitored and assessed closely. Customers are our priority, the DNS records have been corrected and AVG is working hard to resume normal service levels to its customer base and continue to protect our customers and their privacy”.
