Google among firms hit in Pakistan hack

Technology firms including Google, Apple, eBay and Yahoo were among almost 300 companies whose websites were hit by a hack attack in Pakistan.

The attack, which exploited vulnerabilities in domain name systems (DNS) to redirect traffic, targeted sites with Pakistani domain names, such as .com.pk, .pk and org.pk, according to the BBC.

Visitors to the targeted sites were redirected to a web page with a picture of two penguins walking across a bridge with the slogan "Pakistan Downed".

Although the attacks targeted websites, and not the networks of the companies involved, services such as Google's Gmail were temporarily unavailable in Pakistan.

The motive for the attack has not been confirmed, but some reports have speculated that it was aimed at highlighting weaknesses in the organisation that administers .pk web domains, known as PKNIC.

Technology blog ProPakistani said it had received an email from the hackers explaining how they carried out the attack.

The hackers claimed that PKNIC’s servers were vulnerable to Boolean-based blind SQL injection, time-based blind SQL injection, cross-site scripting (XSS) and “sensitive directory disclosure”.

Image: Thinkstock

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