Iranian Cyber Army Hacks Twitter Website

Early on Friday, Twitter visitors got a nasty surprise when instead of the micro blogging site's home page, they were directed to another page which declared that the site was hacked by the Iranian Cyber Army. 

The page contained Arabic text overlaid on a green colored flag displaying the name of third Shi'i Imam, Imam Husayn. Interestingly, the page also contained a Persian poem which when translated, said "We shall strike if the leader orders, we shall lose our heads if the leader wishes." 

Visitors to the defaced site were also greeted by a message which read: “This site has been hacked by the Iranian Cyber Army” 

Whether the site was really attacked by the Iranian Cyber Army or a bunch of school kids, its still not clear. However, Twitter along with several other social networking sites had played a major role in the anti-government protests that occurred during elections in Iran. 

Twitter, which allows its users to share 140 character long SMS-type messages, went offline soon after the images appeared, only to come back online an hour later appearing to be normal. 

The website reported that the outage was caused because its DNS server had been temporarily compromised but it also added that the problem had been fixed and that further updates will be given once the underlying cause is determined.