WhatsApp, AVG and Avira attacked by pro-Palestinian Anonymous hackers

Pro-Palestinian hackers managed to conduct DNS redirection attacks on the websites of popular mobile messaging service WhatsApp, as well as security companies AVG and Avira.

The Anonymous-affiliated hacking group, calling itself KDMS, claimed responsibility for the attacks on Twitter, delivering pro-Palestinian defacement messages ending in the words "long live Palestine."

All three websites seem to be the victim of an attack on Network Solutions, a domain name registrar and website hosting company. It is unclear whether emails from WhatsApp could have been intercepted.

"It appears that our account used to manage the DNS records registered at Network Solutions has received a fake password-reset request not being initiated by anyone at Avira. Network Solutions appears to have honoured this request and allowed a third party to assume control of our DNS," said Sorin Mustaca of Avira in a statement.

DNS records provide a routing lookup for the internet: they tell computers where to find servers or other computers. Changing the DNS record can misdirect all the traffic that relies on it; and because changes in DNS records propagate around the internet between the servers, their effects can last for days even after the original change has been undone.

The KDMS group also claimed responsibility for an attack on Leaseweb, a hosting company with around 4% of the global internet traffic under its management, and successfully effected a DNS redirect for its homepage. more

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