The websites of AVG and Avira (who both offer great, free antivirus software) were hit by a DNS redirection attack October 8, 2013. Users were sent to pro-Palestinian websites.
A team of hacktivists calling themselves KDMS have claimed credit for the hacks.
Visitors to avg.com were greeted by a rendition of the Palestinian national anthem (via an embedded YouTube video) and a message from a pro-Palestinian group calling itself the KDMS Team, instead of the usual security tips and links to anti-malware downloads.
This is how Avira’s website (www.avira.com) looked:
This was a DNS hijack. It means that visitors who thought they had landed at avira.com, for example, were actually being redirected to a different IP address (one where the hackers hosted their image/message) and not to Avira’s normal IP address.
Readers should note that this was after the August 28, 2013 attack, when “Syrian Electronic Army” hackers disrupted The New York Times, the Huffington Post and Twitter, and after mass cyberattack attempts against Israel on April 7, 2013. The cyberattacks against Israel were, for the most part, intercepted, and caused only minor disruptions.
