Service from San Francisco Company Twitter was temporarily shut down last night as the homepage was hacked and redirected. Tweeters were shown a page purportedly created by the “Iranian Cyber Army,” which gave a cryptic message, part-English and part-Farsi, about the use of Internet in Iranian affairs, which read in part:
“U.S.A. Think They Controlling And Managing Internet By Their Access, But They Don’t, We Control And Manage Internet By Our Power, So Do Not Try To Stimulation Iranian Peoples To…” (click here for complete text from Baynewser)
Major news sources are taking the action as a real threat from the Iranian government. The Christian Science Monitor points out that the hack coincides with the Islamic holy month of Moharram, a time that opposition activists were planning to use to bolster their efforts.
Opposition sites were also hacked with the same message put up on Twitter. What’s more, the same article discusses the Iranian government’s “powerful Internet eavesdropping and hacking capabilities.”
TechCrunch (via WaPo) also reminds us that Iran announced this morning that they are moving forward on Uranium enrichment, and furthermore that Iraq has reported an Iranian incursion on a disputed oil well.
Back at baynewser, we learn that the redirect seems to be coming out of Provo, Utah. Twitter founder Biz Stone has acknowledged the interruption in his blog, saying that everything is fine now.
Whew! And what are we tweeting about now that a foreign power isn’t stifling our speech (in San Effing Francisco, people!)? One popular hashtag is #whentwitterwasdown, and the UK’s Independent reports one tweet as saying: “#whentwitterwasdown I harvested my crops on Farmville.” So we can all relax. As long as we have multiple web outlets for frittering our time away expressing our cultural values, America wins!
