Hackers on anti-Egypt spree bury Egyptology journal in the sand

Hackers waging war against Egyptian websites have forced the closure of Egyptological, a journal on Egyptology. Egyptologist Kate Phizackerley, who published the web periodical with Andrea Byrnes, has also closed down her personal blog for the same reason. Egyptological was shut down after it was "targeted by a professional …

[John Lilburne]

Dontcha lovem

Hackers and "News of the World" readers not much sense between any of them paediatrician->paedophile Egyptology->Egyptian state.

[Jason Togneri]

I got confused by the URL

Although El Reg is by now quite well known for its URL typos, this one was particularly amusing. I thought for a moment that there were hackers keeping websites online when their owners wanted to shut them down:

http://www.theregister.co.uk/2013/01/23/egyptology_site_forced_online_by_hackers/ forced ONLINE

[Crisp]

Re: I got confused by the URL

Oh that's priceless!

[Silverburn]

Re: I got confused by the URL

Methinks the "send corrections" options should have been used for the sake of pedantry, but sometimes mistakes are worth leaving undeclared - purely for their amusement value.

[Robert Helpmann??]

Always the Gentleman

Part of the reason for my reticence is that some, although not all, of the hackers have been polite to us.

So if they start calling her names, the kid gloves are coming off?

[The Man Who Fell To Earth]

Huh?

The article seems to be missing the single most important piece of information, namely the reason claimed by the people behind the assault for disliking the study of ancient Egyptian history.

[Anonymous Coward]

Re: Huh?

Political reasons ... being how for these folks admitting that Egypt existed before their religion would not be politically correct?

I guess the Pyramids may be a bit of a problem. Then they could just use a Sarah Palin style explanation in that obviously Allah created them when he came into existence in about 500 AD and made them look like they were much older?

[Anonymous Coward]

Re: Huh?

Generally Egyptians are incredibly proud of their heritage, but some Muslims have problems with it being an amazingly successful polytheistic civilisation that celebrated the human body. Sadly some of these people are senior politicians in the Salafist parties. So far none of them have called for the destruction of archaeological remains, but there have been calls for statues and inscriptions to be covered in wax. This is part of a general attack on Egyptian culture where writers and journalists are coming under increasing attack.

[Anonymous Coward]

If in doubt

Blame the ragheads

[Winkypop]

Not to be outdone

Conservative christian hackers in the US have brought down the Smithsonian and the Metropolitan Museum of Art web sites.

[Anonymous Coward]

Re: Not to be outdone

Only a matter of time!

You forgot Wikipedia from your list. Long live Conservutopiapaedia.

[jon 72]

Re: Not to be outdone

Confusing the Metropolitan Museum of Art site with the infamous "Met Art" web site is an easy mistake for those blinded by religious zeal.

[Anonymous Coward]

Any big host willing to step in

and save the day ?

[Stevie]

Bah!

So these people prevent someone from speaking freely on the web by closing down their website and blog?

This must be a new definition of "polite" that I am unfamiliar with.

[Matt Bryant]

Re: Bah!

"So these people prevent someone from speaking freely on the web by closing down their website and blog?...." Yeah, who do they think they are, the Anonyputzs?

[Cubical Drone]

Good thing for websites about flour that the FSM would never tolerate this sort of thing.

[Anonymous Coward]

Truth

The owners of egyotological tried in vain to recover the website which was running WordPress. Hackers gained access to administrator accounts via an exploit

The owners of egyptological failed to patch the security glitch in WordPress

The hackers looked up the website host and managed to plant a backdoor on sitehq,egyptological was hosted on siehq. Sitehq failed to remove such backdoor in to their system, leaving other hosted sites open to attack.

This was not the work of islamists

Hackers threatened to infect the computers of anyone who was associated with egyptological

The group responsible are located in China of which they have taken down big names such as IBM

[Anonymous Coward]

Why?

Personally looking at why either somebody, or bodies have done something I look for a reason. I can see absolutely no reason that Chinese hackers would attack a web site of Egyptology research.

I think Mike Richards suggestions for why people might attack this web site pretty plausible. Perhaps, assuming that you aren't just trying to suggest that this isn't another piece of albeit mild Islamic activity, you could expand on why a group in China would have any reason at all to hack this site?

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