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Al-Jazeera’s Web sites defaced

March 27 — Visitors to both the Arabic and English version of the Al-Jazeera Web site on Thursday were greeted with an American flag and a pro-U.S. message, the work of an apparent online vandal. The controversial Middle Eastern news service apparently had their domain hijacked. The actual defacement is served from a second server elsewhere on the Web.

TECHNICALLY KNOWN as a “redirect,” the hack causes Web browsers that attempt to go to www.aljazeera.net to be surreptitiously redirected to the content hosted on the second server. “Let Freedom Ring!” stated the defacement, which was signed by a vandal with the handle “Patriot” who claimed to be part of a group called the Freedom Cyber Force Militia. “GOD BLESS OUR TROOPS!!!”

VeriSign maintins the Internet registry for the .com, .net, .cc and .tv top-level domains and administers the an authoritative database for all domain names registered in those top-level domains. The domain hijacking may have corrupted Al-Jazeera’s record in the VeriSign’s database.

A representative of VeriSign couldn’t immediately answer questions regarding how the domain had been hijacked. A representative of the hosting service that had the actual content of the defacement also couldn’t be reached.

Al-Jazeera has had to contend with both technical problems and attacks this entire week. The Arab satellite TV network launched its English-language Web site on Monday, attracting significant media coverage. The site hosts the station’s controversial video coverage, which has included images of U.S. soldiers killed and taken prisoner.