The website for the Cochrane BMX Association was hacked Aug. 27, and for the better part of the day contained a statement decrying the branding of Muslims as terrorists.
The website for the Cochrane BMX Association was hacked Aug. 27, and for the better part of the day contained a statement decrying the branding of Muslims as terrorists.
A black background with the group's half-skull, half-Guy Fawkes mask logo (famously associated with the hacking collective Anonymous) and their name AnonCoders greeted visitors, followed by the statement addressed, “To All Corporate Governments | To All Countries, ” [sic].
The message described how Muslims are wrongly identified as terrorists and labeled governments as the “true terrorists. ”
Association president Brad Christensen said he's clueless as to why their site was targeted.
“I have no idea. We're a non-profit kids sports (organization), ” he said, perplexed.
Norja Vanderelst, the site's webmaster, said she believes the site was not individually targeted, but was part of a hack of the server that hosts a number of other sites. Some of her other clients' sites also suffering from the same hack.
“It's not a coincidence when all the sudden eight websites are being hacked with the same message, ” Vanderelst said.
She attempted to contact the company Lunar Pages, which owns the server, about the hack, but was frustrated by what she viewed as their refusal to take responsibility.
“I'm just trying to get an answer. I think it's unacceptable. ”
Vanderelst said the company told her that her files weren't updated, but she said everything was secure before the hack. She said she restored some of the files Aug. 27 but discovered the next day the site was hacked again.
She said five sites hosted by Lunar Pages have been affected.
Vanderelst doesn't currently know when the site will be restored from the most recent. As of press time, Cochrane BMX Association's website was back up and running.
The Eagle attempted to reach Lunar Pages for comment but no response was received by press time.
In a comment exchange on the Facebook page “AnonCoders ” linked on the BMX Association's compromised site, an anonymous member of the group referred to the message on the hacked page as the reason behind the cyber attack.
“We are sending that message to every gov [sic] and everyone. ”
When asked if the hack was part of a mass attack targeting multiple websites at once, the commentator linked to a website that listed the BMX Association's URL. The site was listed along with others hacked on the same date.
This isn't the first time the association's site experience a cyber attack. Christensen told the Eagle their site was breached two days before the provincial championship, Aug. 8 and 9, causing confusion for people looking for information.
“It was bad timing, ” Christensen said, speaking about the first attack. “Everyone was going to our website for information. That was not very convenient having it down over provincials. ”
He said people from out of Cochrane who visited the site for directions to the track or schedules were left stumped.
The first hack did not include a message and consisted mostly of “computer gibberish, ” such as numbers and letters, Christensen said.
Hackers under the AnonCoders name took responsibility for hacking of the French magazine site of Charlie Hebdo in February and the Republican Party of Kentucky's website in May.
A full list of compromised websites can be found zoneh.org/archive/ip=216.97.233.44/page=1.
