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Iraqi Shiite Cleric's Web Site Hacked

by Lee Bains on September 22, 2008 at 10:20 AM



Friday, the Web site of Ayatollah Ali al-Sistani -- Iraq's most prominent Shiite cleric -- was hacked by the mysterious Group XP, CNN reports.

As a result of the hack, the Web site displayed -- instead of al-Sistani's usual words of moral guidance -- a video of Bill Maher mocking the cleric and advice he had given on said Web site. Claiming to be offended Sunnis, Group XP supplemented the video with written indictments of recent sexual discussions appearing on the the cleric's site, going on to charge al-Sistani with marring the reputation of the Sunni faith. The hackers also stated on the site that they had broken into Christian Web sites offensive to Islam and Arab Christian sites with a sexual subject matter.

While some experts suspect that Group XP is associated with Wahhabis, a group of fundamentalist, primarily Saudi Arabian, Sunnis, nobody is certain of its identity.

One thing is for sure: They must be professionals, as hacking into a Web site is no doubt more difficult than hacking into a Yahoo! e-mail account. [From: CNN]

Tags: breaking news, BreakingNews, crime, hacks, iraq, security, web

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